We all do it. In fact, our mobile phones demand it of us – they insist that we create a voicemail greeting. I resent them greatly. It’s foolish to pretend that you can soften the blow of not having your call answered. A mere recording is not much in the way of a souvenir. As much as I hate encountering the voicemail of others, what I despise most of all is the task of recording these messages. You know the kind. They begin by telling those who are trying to reach you that you ‘cannot come to the phone right now’ with the offer to ‘leave a message’ at the tone. These invitations often contain the sweetener of a promise to return the call ‘as soon as I can.’ This, of course, is a spectacular untruth.
We all do it. In fact, our mobile phones demand it of us – they insist that we create a voicemail greeting. I resent them greatly. It’s foolish to pretend that you can soften the blow of not having your call answered. A mere recording is not much in the way of a souvenir. As much as I hate encountering the voicemail of others, what I despise most of all is the task of recording these messages. You know the kind. They begin by telling those who are trying to reach you that you ‘cannot come to the phone right now’ with the offer to ‘leave a message’ at the tone. These invitations often contain the sweetener of a promise to return the call ‘as soon as I can.’ This, of course, is a spectacular untruth.
There is an art to creating the perfect voicemail message. Firstly, you must sound as fatigued as possible. This is to create the illusion that the reason you have failed to answer the phone is not because you’ve spent the past forty five minutes lingering around the photocopier discussing the upcoming season of X-Factor but because you are mind bogglingly busy. This fact should be emphasised by a tone of voice best described not so such ‘world weary’ but ‘whole of the universe weary’.
This is one of those funny areas that is completely unregulated and yet there are very clear social conventions at work. To the best of my knowledge, the Ten Commandments are yet to be updated to take account of the upswing in mobile telephonic communications (and are much the poorer as a result). There’s no by-rule nor ordinance that says your voicemail recording must be a precise blend of exhaustion and boredom. In theory, there’s nothing to prevent you from calmly informing the caller that, in all likelihood, you have deliberately chosen not to answer their call because you’re too busy bidding on a size eight Shirl’s Neighbourhood vintage t-shirt on EBay to pick up the phone. Or, better still, declaring ‘Too bad! You wanted to speak to me but now all you get is this lousy message. Better luck next time, sucker.’
For reasons I cannot explain, I have created a message bank greeting that sounds as if all the life has been sucked out of me through a straw. Let me be frank. After which I will be ‘Stuart’ once more, but for the time being allow me to be frank – I am not that busy. I have no right whatsoever to sound as fatigued as my voicemail message would lead you to believe. Truth be known, I’ve probably misplaced my mobile phone on a temporary basis having earlier used it as an impromptu paperweight. Either that, or I’ve been answering the higher calling for which there truly is no call waiting and am in the in-door outhouse. Not that my voicemail message says as much.
Low-level despair is not the only option when it comes to your pre-recorded message. There’s also a tone of voice I like to refer to as ‘the ultimate professional’. This is all about striking the perfect balance between enthusiasm and steely resolve. I’d be happy to switch from ‘world weary and super busy’ to ‘ultimate professional’ but the perfect moment in which to record such a message never seems to arrive. Frankly, ‘world weary’ comes more easily. Besides, I can never find the right location to record it. Kitchen? Too disingenuous. Public transport? Not the right atmosphere. And although the acoustics in the bathroom cannot be faulted, it just feels wrong.
In the 1990s, my entire social life depended on an answering machine I bought from Tandy for $19.95. It used miniature tapes – the kind you only find in Dictaphones or Lilliput – which would gradually lose their structural integrity to the point that every message sounded as if it was in slow motion. Due to a range of reasons, all of which were the result of having too much spare time on my hands, I devoted a great deal of energy to ensuring that the message on my answering machine was the most spectacular, breathtaking and down-right awe-inspiring message I could manage. The production values were second to none. That is, they were second to none in the category of ‘best message on an answering machine bought for 20 bucks or less’. There were musical numbers, including an absolute cracker involving Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass and a voiceover that may have given the impression that, rather than talking to a machine, the caller was simply on hold. Needless to say, this joke quickly became stale with members of my immediate family and was abandoned altogether at the insistence of my (then) mother-in-law to be. None of my recorded messages since have been nearly as exciting.
I need to get back to making entertaining voicemail messages. Why did I stop being creative? Have I lost something of my more youthful self? These are big questions. Questions that, quite frankly, demand answers. Determined to find out more, I decided to give myself a good talking to and dialled my mobile phone number. Perhaps inevitably, it went through to message bank. The world-weary voice on the other end told me that I regretted missing my call and that I would call me back at the earliest possible instant. I’m yet to hear back. Perhaps some questions – as well as some phone calls – are destined to remain unanswered.