Digressed

March 2, 2004: The work floater

So for the past three months I’ve had sole possession of one of work’s cellphone floaters to use while in Frankfurt and, interestingly enough, I never had one person tell me they were able to leave a voice mail when they couldn’t get through. Since I’d never had to check voice mail, I was very surprised when a month or so ago, out of nowhere, here pops up the voice mail icon on the phone’s screen.

Of course, I had never even checked it and didn’t know if there was a PIN set but I proceeded to call and was greeted by a message telling me I’d never set my voice mail options followed by a menu asking me to record a greeting. I was on the road that day and became a bit annoyed since all I wanted was to hear the message in case it was something important and now I was having to go through this. Anyways, I play along and, at first, sing (literally) something along the lines of

Livewire floater!

and then press the # key to indicate I’m done recording. I hear nothing. So I figure the # key didn’t register and I press it again. Silence. Press it again. And again and after 15 or so presses I finally hear a different beep and a voice telling me my greeting has been recorded and that I have two choices:

1. Keep the new greeting.
2. Re-record it.

So, naturally I don’t want to keep such a ridiculous message so I go with option 2. Once again, I am all playful and sing the message

Livewire floater!

followed by the # key. Again, silence.

# key.

# key.

# key.
# key.
# key.

And keep doing it until the different beep. So now I’m really annoyed because I have no way to abort this greeting task and fall back to some default message. I give it a third, fourth and perhaps even a fifth try (I didn’t sing any of those times). After the last one I was completely annoyed, so I gave up and simply hung up the phone and completely forget about it.

Until I get a call from a co-worker while I was visiting Boston a week or so ago, that is. She asks me a couple of questions regarding our project and then inquires if I’ve heard the voice mail greeting. I laugh briefly and ask her what it says. She starts cracking up as she describes the message:

You first say something like Livewire floater and then there’s a beep and another beep and another and another for like 20 seconds when it stops briefly and then you can faintly hear your voice saying something along the lines of I hate this fucking phone. And then more and more beeps for another 20 seconds or so. It’s hilarious!

Of course, like her, I’m laughing uncontrollably as she recaps this and make a mental note that maybe I should re-record the greeting.

Or maybe not.