I Think Voicemail is a Curse

For about 12 years I was the Administrator of a Government facility where 75 people from 8 Departments worked from. I came to recognize something about approximately 50% of them, they didn't understand that the most important of their jobs was to serve the needs of the public who incidentally paid all their salaries. This group looked upon interaction with the public as being an intrusion on their time.

Under the system that I had implemented at the time it was difficult for them to avoid that contact because every call coming to the center was answered at a receptionist position who could track them down and who knew where each person was. She could see at a glance from this wonderful thing called a switchboard if they were on their phone and maintained a status board where she could see if people were out of the office or in a meeting.

The culture that was in the facility was that the most important function of every person was to serve the publics requirements before the institutions. This meant there was no excuse for not responding promptly to a member of the public who was trying to reach someone. Now I believe every business or organization needs to put at the top of its list of priorities the necessity of managing contacts with clients and customers. Once voicemail is installed about 50% of individuals and probably 90% of government use it to avoid having to be in contact with the unwashed.

I get so fucking sick of phoning places and hearing "I can't take your call right now I am either away from my desk or on the phone, please leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible. WHAT A PILE OF CRAP" What it really means is that I might check my messages at some point in the future and then if I think you are important enough I might get back to you.

One guy who worked in Charlottetown actually told me how much he loved voicemail because he never had to answer his phone anymore. I think that someone needs to design a telephone killer app that you could use to fill up a persons voicemail with electronic recorded messages and distribute it for free over the Internet with VOIP I think this could now be possible. Everytime you phoned someone who made you go through a menu, a system would deliver 50 voicemails to them which would fill up their voicemail box. They would then have to clear the messages out one at a time. The messages could sound like this.

"Thank you for taking my call on your voicemail. Its encouraging to know that my call is so important to you that you have chosen to record it for posterities sake. You must be psychic to know that my time is no importance and I have so much of it to spread around. Its nice to be treated with such respect by an an important person like you. In fact you have convinced me that hearing from me is so important I think I'll call back and leave you 50 more messages."

Please, Please someone invent a voicemail virus that kills the whole fucking thing.