I get lots of voicemail, most of it at work. My cell number is not something I pass around like a quart of Carling Black Label out back of the Scranton CYC in 1967. You'll have to forgive me for clinging to the Jeffersonian-era notion that all of us are still entitled to at least some isolated pockets of privacy in our lives.
Did I ever tell you our personal checks don't have our address on them? That can lead to the occasional amusing moment or two. Some of the oddball stares we've gotten from those not knowing what to do with a check without an address are priceless. It's pretty clear that we've completely stumped the party to whom we've handed the check. The next move, predictably, is that they go in search of their immediate superior.
Orwell's 1984 was published in 1949. So, how are we doing so far?
You got yourself a GPS? It can tell you precisely where you are at any given moment, meaning that it knows where you are at any given moment. Do you need the potential for abuse spelled out here? Some would say we're screwed. I say it's a trade-off, it's all part of the times in which w
e live and the info-jammed lives we lead. I'm OK with it, only because I see no way out of it.And, yes, I caved on GPS-mania, buying one a couple weeks ago.
When email and the internet exploded in the mid to late '90s, my opinion was that about all it amounted to was more ways for strangers to intrude into your life, maybe more like insinuate themselves into your life. Through my job at the time, I was forced to become not only computer literate, but computer savvy in a hurry. Either learn the software or flunk the daily test of getting the job done.
I learned the hardware, the software, and became, almost by default, pretty good at that which many others were not yet any good at all. For a time, perhaps one of those brief and shining moments, I was almost the computer expert, the go-to guy.
Let's consider this post nothing more than a gripe, one gripe.
If and when you leave voicemail to anyone at any time for any reason, just remember the old TV news axiom that the good stuff goes up top. When you build a TV newscast, you put the best stuff at the beginning of the show, you give people your best right away. You don't make them wait, because waiting is boring, and boring means those people go elsewhere.
It easily applies to voicemail. Put the good stuff up top there, too. The good stuff is your phone number. Give your phone number s-l-o-w-l-y, and do it again, s-l-o-w-l-y.
There have been occasions when I couldn't pull a phone number out of the message left me despite playing it over and over and over again. Several times, I actually forwarded the message to other staffers on the outside chance they could break the code. Some times they can, mostly they cannot.
Now, enjoy the music while your party is located...and do remember that your call is important to us.
