When I got rid of my pager last year, I thought that people would understand how a cell phone works. Nope. Here’s the deal. I’m serious, this is really annoying to me.
1. Call my cell phone.
2a. I answer, and we talk.
2b. If I don’t answer, leave a message.
3a. If you do not leave a message, I will not call you back! Simply calling me is not a reason to call you back. A message says, "Listen, something is up."
3b. If you do leave a message, I will call you back when I have time. If you don’t hear from me, it’s either a brush-off or not a brush-off. easy.
But, if you don’t leave a message and call repeatedly, that’s like saying, "Paul, please don’t call me back – I want to bug you constantly."
Pagers work in a similar fashion. My pager had a voicemail and just a straight-through pager function. I told people, "If it’s an emergency, type in your number. Otherwise, leave a message." I can’t even tell you how many times I’d get a number, and the resulting phone call would go like this:
me: "Yeah, you paged me, what do you need?"
other person: "Nothing. I just wanted to see what’s up."
ungh! I am very tempted to just get rid of it all if people can’t figure out how to use it. Maybe I should just tell everyone to email me, instead. And if you don’t have email, too bad. -pm
Posted in Technology
Paul January 15, 2010, 2:26 am
Man, ten years ago? I was a bit jerky.