Leave a message after the beep

Here’s something I think about almost every time I am about to leave a message for someone.  Do we still need to record an outgoing message telling people to ‘please leave a message after the tone’?  Do we really need to remind people when and how they need to start recording a message for us?

We are in the twenty first century; we have cars that can automatically parallel park for us, we have computers that are smarter than any software engineer out there; we have missiles that can seek out and shoot a target from thousands of miles away without any help from a human being, but yet we still need a reminder to ‘leave a message after the beep’?  Haven’t we been doing that for many, many years by now?  Do we still not know what to do when we hear that beep?

Typically, when I get one of those outgoing messages I like to pretend I didn’t hear their instructions on how to record my message.  Instead when I hear the beep, I start talking to my kids in the background, giving instructions and then complain into the phone about how I don’t know if I heard the the beep and if I should be recording a message at this point or hanging up…  I do however absolutely love those people that record their outgoing message as: “It’s me, you know what to do!”  Nothing else, which is more like it.

Voicemail and My Father’s Outgoing Message…

The other day a friend of mine told me that I am the only person she knows that still owns an answering machine…  Apparently, everyone else in the world has long done away with those and only using electronic voice-mail now.  I’m a bit slow with technology, I admit.  However, I refuse to give my phone provider an extra $12 per month for voice-mail when I have a perfectly good answering machine!  Who cares anyway, not a soul calls my land-line and they haven’t since 2008.  The only reason I still have a land-line is because I get a huge package discount for having cable, internet and phone service.  A whole 10 Bucks!

My pre-historic answering machine reminded me of my parents outgoing message back in the day.  Our first answering machine in this country was a memory I will not easily forget.  My Father had to record the outgoing message, being the man of the house and all.  However, after months of listening to one hang up after another we finally decided that my Dad’s threatening  and a bit disturbing message had to go…  This is what he recorded (now do this with a very heavy Russian accent): “You have reached the Beynarts, WE NO HOME.  WE COME BACK AND FIND YOU!”  For the audio version, CLICK HERE   Would anyone leave their name and number on this machine?

I always wondered why my friends NEVER left messages.  The next day at school they’d say: “Hey Julia I called you and called you all night.  I think I got the wrong number, it was some KGB hotline.”  Um, no its my Dad.

My brother and I pleaded with him to let us record a new message, “Dad, you are scaring off all our friends.  Can’t we just record a Normal message?”  Here is how that conversation went (again, do this with a heavy Russian accent):

Dad:  Are their parents lawyers? 

My Brother and I:  No. 

Dad:  Are their parents Doctors? 

My Brother and I:  No, I don’t think so. 

Dad:  Are they engineers? 

My Brother and I:  Not sure Dad.

Dad:  Are their parents FBI?

My Brother and I:  No, we are pretty sure they are not.  

Dad:  You NOT need any friends. 

Case closed.