Do people really need to have that whole spiel on their answering machine - you've reached Jack and Jill and we're not available to take your call, please leave your name and number after the beep and we'll get back to you as soon as possible?
Aren't we all trained well enough now that we'd just leave a message after the beep? And aren't we adult enough to know that if we don't leave a number no-one will bother to go look it up and call us back? And isn't it understood that if the answering machine picks up, the householders are not interested in or capable of talking at that particular moment? And really, doesn't the phrase "get back to you as soon as possible" suggest, perhaps erroneously, that the owners of the answering machine will call you back while still wearing their coats and shoes, immediately upon returning and entering the house, so that you don't have to wait a moment more than necessary to get their recipe for sex-in-a-pan.
Shouldn't we maybe tell the truth?
"You've reached the number you dialed. Unless you're drunk-dialing or dyscalculic. We might possibly call you back if this isn't the nine hundredth time you've called this week to try and get us to take a survey about our eating habits. If this is my Mom, don't tell me how much you hate my answering machine. It's an inanimate object and it doesn't care. BEEP."
(I should probably add that my answering machine says something about tacos, thanks to the collective sense of humour of the four teenagers regularly playing with the phone. And yet people leave messages.)
