From: dmarcher@acsu.buffalo.edu (Dave Archer)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Telephone & other miscellaneous peeves
Date: 31 Dec 92 20:36:09 GMT
Organization: UB


I was originally going to just post some quick
telephone/answering machine peeves, but between the time
that I thought to do so, and actually started this post,
thought of a couple extra things.

AbsurdPeeve: Just saw on CNN that they're splitting
Czechoslovakia into two contries.  One called Czech, and
one called Slovakia.  I'm not making this up, but to me,
this sounds like one of those things that Dave Barry swares
he's not making up.  I suppose it'll save on having to
reprint maps of Europe AGAIN, just cross out the o, and
draw a line between Czech & slovakia.  If it was April 1st,
I'd think CNN had a sense of humour or something.

OriginalPeeve: Telephones.  Ever since I got this one phone
line, I've always gotten an outrageous amount of wrong
numbers.  Never mind that my original number always got
confused with both a bank and the boy's club, and I thought
that was bad.  I've gotten people from, I think, China
calling long distance, although I kinda doubt from China
itself, yelling at me in some language that I don't
understand.  And of course, the BDIs that must hit redial
after dialing a wrong number in the first place.  For
awhile I was keeping a list of people that don't live here,
but gave up after I noticed it had absolutely no pattern.  

So, anyways, I gave up and just stopped answering the phone
until it rang a really long time, and just told everyone I
knew to let the phone ring a really long time.  They just
wouldn't stand for it and eventually got angry at me for
being such a twit and not answering the phone.  What do
they care if half the time I answer it I get people
screaming at me in Mandarin?

Then I got the obligatory answering machine.  Wonderfull
thing has two settings: "Answer the phone before Dave has a
chance to get it" or "Wait 12 years before answering the
phone and pissing everyone off".  On top of that, people
just started leaving messages for other people on the
machine.  Some guy got an audition for some part in some
show somewhere, but the poor sap never got the message, and
I assume ended up being a no-show.  It doesn't even seem to
matter if I say I'm Dave, they'll leave messages for Joe
anyways.  At least the Mandarians don't leave a message.
Maybe if I had an outgoing message in Mandarian, the other
people would stop leaving messages too, although likely
people would start complaining that I was a twit for having
an outgoing message in a language they don't understand.

Anyhow, that all history leads up to the peeve du jour:

Peeve: The bloody thing is broken, and I didn't notice for
the past 2 weeks.  See, since I get so many wrong numbers,
a good percentage of the time, I just get a ring,ring,
clicking sounds from the machine, more clicking sounds, and
rewinding sounds, and no message, because SOME people
actually realize that when they hear "This is Dave", and
don't recognize the voice, that they've dialed the wrong
number, and so they hang up.  Unfortuantely, I didn't catch
on for the past few days that it was doing this to every
call.  I suppose I should have suspected something when I
stopped getting messages, but since I've been home more
with the holidays and all, I've been answering the phone in
person more than usual.  But..

MegaPeeve:  The stupid thing is that NOBODY bothered to ask
why I hadn't returned their call.  A couple people
mentioned that they had been trying to get a hold of me,
but they never bothered to mention that they had left a
message, I just figured they didn't bother to leave a
message, figured they had called a wrong number or
something (recently I've had an outgoing message along the
lines of "This is Dave.  If you're not calling Dave, don't
leave a message.  In fact, unless it's important, don't
leave a message, you're probably calling someone else and
just can't follow instructions.  In the event that you're
absolutely sure that you're calling me, and you're
absolutely sure that I care about what you have to say,
then go ahead and leave a message, but I sware that if
you're really calling someone else, I'll hunt you down and
rip your vocal cords out.", a message like that tends to
cut down on both the wrong number messages AND the right
number messages.  

Anyhow, I'm annoyed at the whole thing.  Tape jammed, was
easy enough to fix, but I'm starting to wonder..  I had
enough problems when it worked right, maybe I just should
have left it broken.

!Peeve:  At least it's an unlisted number so people reading
this can't look up my number to leave messages for other
people just to piss me off.  I know some of you were
thinking of doing that, just admit it.

ObFeh:  Feh.

ObAmnesia:  I sware I had something extra besides that
Czech thing, but I don't remember.  I suppose that's a
peeve in itself.

Dave

---
 Note: I do not represent my employer or school, & sometimes not even myself.

  Dave Archer  |  Internet: dmarcher@acsu.buffalo.edu
               |    Bitnet: V116KZND@UBVMS
               |     GEnie: D.ARCHER
               |   Prodigy: Surely you jest!

Hey, you never know.
Newsgroups: alt.peeves