Heart and Mind

Voice Mail and Caller ID on Cell Phones

Can it really be well over a month since this blog was updated? Absolutely. What can I say? Been busy, busy, busy. As always, I had lots of blog ideas, but no time to write them out. Hopefully, I'll get back in the "regular blogging" game now, but I can't promise! I'll start it off here with some thoughts on leaving—or not leaving—messages on cell phone voice mail systems.

In 1977 or '78, I was in first grade and it was when I experienced my first answering machine. I had called a schoolmate who lived in the well-to-do part of town, and was pretty freaked out when this automated recording picked up the phone and requested I leave a message. I immediately hung up the phone and asked my folks about it. They explained what it was and the purpose it served, and I then enthusiastically called back and not only left my name, but spelled it out.

Well, throughout the 80s, answering machines became more popular and there was a whole breed of folks out there that said, "I hated those damn machines!" These were usually people who were of an older generation, or at least older than my generation. Answering machines were growing in popularity and they were no longer for the rich families only. In fact, by the end of the decade, folks who didn't have an answering machine were the rare exception, and those big "two tape models" (one, big cassette for the outgoing message, one for the incoming messages) had been replaced by these little microcasette recorders with one tiny tape.

Well, flash forward throughout the 90s and the tape disappeared and it also became more and more common place to have no machine at all, but "voice mail," which, essentially, is a digital answering machine located someplace where you've never been, but you can dial into it.

Now, these days pretty much everyone has a cell phone—even the people who claimed they had no use for them a few years ago—and all these cell phones have their own voice mail. And, even more notably, they all have caller ID and little messages that keep track of your "missed calls" and who, specifically, you missed the calls from.

This last fact makes things weird for me. You see, now when I opt not to leave a message for someone, they still know I called. And then they wonder why I didn't leave a message. It seems kind of stalker-ish, like I'm doing the phone-equivelent of lurking in the bushes and looking in the window.

But that's not the case. Here's where I'm figuring there has got to be some others out there who can relate to this thinking: sometimes you, indeed, don't want people to know you called if you can't talk to them right then and there, but for good reasons that have nothing to do with anything negative. Consider:

• Sometimes I'm calling about something time sensitive, and if the person I'm calling doesn't pick up the phone, there is no reason to bug them. Example: I'm calling to see if you want to join me for dinner and I'm going to eat right now. So it's a "now" or "never mind, don't sweat it deal." There's no reason to call me tomorrow morning when you get a chance to return the call, right?

• Sometimes the reason I'm calling is just not important at all, so I don't want to put pressure on the person to have to call back just to say "Hello." Even if you leave a message that says, "No biggie, you don't have to call back," it sometimes makes people feel weird and they call back anyway because they don't believe you and think you were just being nice.

• Sometimes you do want to surprise someone with a call and hear the enthusiasm in their voice when they're greeted by an unexpected call from an old friend. Or, in the extreme negative version of this idea, you may want to surprise someone with a call because the conversation is going to be a bit of a confrontation and you don't want them to know you're trying to call them so they can mentally prepare.

OK, so the last part of the last point was negative, but you get the point. Sometimes there were times where it was desirable to not leave a trail leading back to you, and it made perfect sense for all parties involved. Those days are gone if you're calling a cell phone, and pretty much gone even on landlines because so many people have caller ID. Now, you'll know I called you no matter what. And then you might start to wonder why I'm not leaving a message. And that's ironic, too, because the caller ID/missed call technology actually, I would argue, encourages people not to leave messages. Consider...

Unless I have a very specific message to get across that works well on a recorded message (and, yes, that happens a lot, but we're not talking about those times here), then there is really no reason whatsoever to leave a message. After all, the phone itself will tell you that I called. It will tell you when I called. And it will tell you what number I called from. What else do you need to know????

posted by Steve @ 10:05 PM