Thursday 27 September 2012

Telephone Tips #1 How to leave a message

It's quite simple, you say your name and then your own telephone number, loud and clear and slowly.

It you then want to prattle on brightly for several minutes, that's fine, the person listening to the message can ring you back as soon as he has got the general gist.

If you do the prattling brightly first and then mumble your telephone number right at the end, or even worse, don't mention it at all, that is about as much use as a missing sock.

10 comments:

A K Haart said...

Sounds like the voice of recent experience - message and socks.

Mark Wadsworth said...

AKH, I get these stupid 'voicemails' all the time. I tend to lose interest towards the end of a long garbled message and then I hear them say their number but it's too late to write it down and then I've got to listen to the whole thing again.

As to socks, I solved that problem years ago: just buy yourself a dozen pairs of identical socks, once they are whittled down to nine or ten survivors, chuck them in the bin and start again.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Oh yes, with you 100%. Mumbling is a very well chosen word, it's almost like they're in a hurry to drop the phone ... which they very well might be considering how uneasy someone looks when they're talking to a machine. :)

Mark In Mayenne said...

Agree entirely. French people leave perfectly intelligible messages until they get to their phone number, when they accelerate to double speed. And by the time you've finished multiplying 20 by 4 and adding 13.....

Robin Smith said...

Also get a tariff where the provider doesnt prattle on for a minute.

Kj said...

I don't listen to or leave voicemails, it's excrutiatingly embarassing to listen to them.

Bayard said...

Don't most telephones now record the caller's number anyway? The most important piece of information for you to leave is who you are.

As for socks, if you stick to one colour, like black, all the time, you can just keep buying more as the old ones wear out, fade or vanish.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Kj, say your name and number on which you can be contacted, then hang up. Easy.

B, black is my chosen colour, but they fade and shrink. The trick only works if the socks are all the same age and have been washed the same number of times. You can mix old and new, new wine in old bottles and all that (or is it old wine and new bottles?)

Bayard said...

M, I take it that "can" is a "can't". It's new wine in old wineskins that doesn't go (because the new wine was still fermenting and the old wineskins were weak and liable to burst, I was told). I used to match up socks with ones of equal fadedness, but nowadays they tend to wear out before they fade.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, yes, I meant to write "you CAN'T mix old and new". Well you can, obviously, but I advise against.