edward fox’s reality

I left voice mails for two different people yesterday. I’m 100% sure they’ll (a) never read this blog entry and (b) never know I was talking about them. I left brief messages, because we all know that most of the time, voice mails are ignored– they’re now treated like a missed call from an unknown number. Who cares? It’s just a voice mail, most of us say.

I’m one of the few that actually will check their voice mail as soon as possible. I can usually answer my phone anywhere, whether at work, home, or school, depending on how important the lecture is… but sometimes, I just can’t answer fast enough. Thankfully, there’s such an invention as a voice mail, but most people don’t even bother to leave me voice mails. I guess they assume that I received their missed call notification, even though I may not have had service at that time, which may have explained why I didn’t answer the call…

…but perhaps we didn’t think about that.

On top of that, I love people’s surprised reactions when they don’t even realize that they have a voice mail, while others blatantly will tell you, “Oh, I never check my voice mail.” OK, so disable it. You can do that? Seriously? Why yes, you can! It’s pretty easy. Dial “611″ from your phone (without the quotes, heh) and ask for it to be removed. Simple as pie!

But why would anyone want to do that? Perhaps that message was important, or maybe it could be saved to blackmail one of your exes! Who knows? The possibilities are genuinely endless, but without a truly plausible scenario for a voice mail (or so it seems), the reason for voice mails on cell phones is depleting. Now, it seems, text messages are taking extreme precedence over the need for voice mail. With text messages, they usually will receive it within a few seconds (unless they are in a poor coverage area). I know with Sprint, sometimes it would take up to an hour to receive a text. GSM networks (T-Mo, Cingular, etc.) are just better with this kind of thing.

But I don’t think that text messages should replace voice mails completely as far as importance. I think you should check your voice mail… it’s just a respect thing. Wouldn’t you want someone to do that for you?

It seems like we’re all losing respect…

…but that’s for another blog.

CHECK Yo’ MESSAGES.