#458 – Beep

I once worked with a guy that had a ridiculously long greeting on his voicemail. He talked really slowly and gave a very detailed description of his plans for the day. It was literally minutes long… longer than any message I would ever leave for him. He updated it every day with the new details of his daily activities. I had to leave him messages multiple times a week and it was torture having to sit through it each time. I worked there for almost 4 years before finding out that I could simply press “9” to skip to the end of his greeting and immediately start recording my message.


0 thoughts on “#458 – Beep”

  1. PsychoDuck says:

    Biff seems to me like the kind of person who’d toss a Vespa in the trash because of a flat tire.

    He’s like the dumbest genius out there, that Biff. Gotta love ‘im.

    The Duck Has Spoken.

  2. SEA says:

    Agreed duck =p

  3. Bobs says:

    On verizon cells and most phones, you can press 1 at the start of the recording to start, um, recording your mesage, and you can press # to make it urgent and stuff like that, options.

  4. Dan says:

    That actually had this happen to me! It was an older phone with a built in answering machine. While away on vacation the receptionist at my dentist’s office called every day leaving a 5 minute message trying to change my appointment. You’d think that after the first 5 minute message she’d start leaving shorter messages or take a hint, but when I came back the answering machine was broken.

  5. MaskedMan says:

    OK, so maybe it’s Business *Anoyances* week, then… I *hate* leaving voicemail. It’s an invitation to be ignored.

  6. Fred says:

    Same to me. I prefer to call again later. I want to be sure the other person hears me through, in case he/she forgets about his machine/the machine breaks down/…

  7. Micah says:

    Throwing the baby out with the bath water, eh Biff?

    The Micah has laughed.

  8. YeahYeah says:

    I also really loathe long voicemail messages.

    But there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, worse than someone who gives you their call back number at 9000 miles an hour. They leave you that 8 minute long message, and then at the very end they shoot out their call back number like the Micro Machines guy from way back when, and you have NO chance of writing it down or remembering it, and then you have to listen to the whole message again with baited breath ready to scribble it down.

    When I leave voicemails with customers (activating their account, etc.), I always just let them know what I did and give them my number and tell them to call me if they have any problems and that if I don’t hear back from them I will assume “no news is good news”. Saves me from having the play phone tag a lot.

    I think the guy from King of Queens (Kevin James?) has a stand-up bit about this, so, sorry for ripping him off I guess.

  9. kenshin620 says:

    Quote from Red vs Blue.

    “To mark your message as urgent, press 11.”

    “There is no 11 you ****ing *****!!”

  10. Alex says:

    I just found this comic. I have no idea how I managed to stumble across this gem, but I do not question good fortune. I’ve spent the last few hours chewing through the archives. Really good stuff!

    You have a new reader!

  11. Amy says:

    I’m a telefund worker, which is like a telemarketer, but only for university alumni. You’d be amazed the stupid answering machine pet-peeves you develop working at a job like this. I’ve had to sit through those long, irritating greetings because I have to leave a message and I can’t skip ahead (there’s no “1” on a headset).

    My biggest pet peeve, though, is people who leave their numbers and not their names on their voicemails. “Hi, you’ve reached 772…” I know WHAT I called, so tell me WHO I called! Once you think to listen for it, you’ll notice 2 out of 3 voicemails have it. Why do people do that?

  12. Gobbledegook says:

    I hate getting voicemails at my job… it usually just translates into more work for me. To combat this, I once recorded “Orion” by Metallica (roughly 7 minutes long) as my message.
    It was easy, too… “Hello! Leave a message after the beep, but first a song! *song starts*)
    I know it was a d**k thing to do, but I got ridiculously few voice mails that way and I got a lot more actual work done.

  13. Chris says:

    @Alex – Yay, new reader!

  14. Seraphine says:

    Press me to start recoding.
    Go away when you are finished.

  15. Reg says:

    I wonder what kind of people are calling Biff.

  16. Trevor says:

    I don’t know how this crazy technology works, so I am not get.

  17. speearr says:

    Haha! Made me laugh uncontrollably… I now have a sudden urge to chuck out my mobile…

  18. DGexe says:

    I don’t think I’ve ever listened to the annoyingly long messages…

    No, wait! On my thirteenth birthday or so, one of my aunts left a five minute “Happy Birthday” message once. Mein Gott, that wasn’t fun to listen to. @@;

    But one of my biggest peeves about voicemails is when someone leaves one, and they leave their name and number; and then I call the number and either…
    1. it doesn’t work or…
    2. so-and-so seems to not live there or has never been in the place where that number leads to.

    The DGKupo’s Typed, ’cause you can’t -speak- posts in a text box

  19. Silfedac says:

    Two things:

    1: That reminds me of my eighth grade science teacher. All he did was lecture, read from the book, or assign us to read the from the book. And he had this really low monotone voice, and that, combined with tha fact that he handed out notes after the lecture, led his class to be used mainly for naps. We were pretty pissed at the end of the year, though. All of the terrible and mean teachers retired and were replaced by younger, nicer models. Lucky seventh graders.

    2: While I am capable of talking for long periods of time face-to-face, the longest I have ever talked on a phone is under five minutes. I get to the point faster with assistance from technology, I guess.

    The Silf has .

  20. nemo says:

    im the 1 that leaves the annoyingly long voicemails!!! i left a 10 minute voice mail 4 my friend jordyn once. she LOVED me after that!!!

  21. Reynard says:

    Back in Ye Olden Dayes before voicemail, my mom worked for a law firm in Cleveland, Ohio. One of the other law firms that she frequently called was, at that time, also one of the largest; and whenever a new receptionist answered with the obligatory long list of partners, she would say, “I’m sorry, your two minutes are up. Please deposit another 25 cents…”

  22. Heinrich says:

    @reynard – (: nice. that seems like something i or my dad would do. i had a friend in high school who’d start talking in japanese whenever a telemarketer called.

  23. Anther says:

    @amy: People will say “You’ve reached 867-5309” instead of their name because they don’t want to give out their name to someone who doesn’t already know it. Someone who might file it away for later use. It’s much the same thing as not putting your name on your mailbox. They state the number, rather than giving no information at all, because they want people to still be able to realize if they’ve gotten a wrong number. You’d think this would only make sense if you’ve got an unlisted number, but it’s nearly impossible to look up a name from a number in a phone book (unless you have a computerized version and can apply a text search to it). Perhaps this is paranoia, but it’s often wise to reveal as little as possible.

  24. Deteramot says:

    Bah. It’s a waste of a phone. Why Biff? Why would you waste that phone, destroying it’s life half-realized?

    By the power avested in me by me being me, I now pronounce this comment spoken. You may begin worship.

  25. Allie says:

    I have an IT job. I hate it when a customer puts in an urgent request and then I can’t get in touch with them because their voicemail box is full. So I have to waste my time trying to call them throughout the day only to learn later on that they put the request in immediately before taking off for two weeks vacation in the hopes it would be magically completed by their return.

    …Can you tell that I’m at work now keeping myself pleasantly distracted?

  26. Corinthiar says:

    Anther> Another situation that I’ve encountered is when someone is on-call and the number dialed forwards to their phone. In certain circumstances, they don’t want the person calling to know who they’ve reached or even the number for the phone they ultimately reached. In some cases, the number for the phone ultimately reached would end up being used instead of the on-call phone number.

  27. Kyle says:

    Well if you want no one to call you than why dont you have you voice mail say. You have reached (some random persons name) at (your number) if you want to go bungee jump than try calling again during the hours of x to y. Something along those lines.

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