A funeral for voicemail - The Oatmeal

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Who even leaves voicemails anymore? If I don’t reach somebody I just sent them a quick text why I called and whatever to call back.

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Doctors offices, bill collectors, anything to do with finances basically.

Emptiness

Yep, Scandinavia here signing under this as well. Well written!

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“We’ve referred you to the specialist, their office should reach out sometime in the next 8 months”

Good luck remembering that call is coming.

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Which is why they should all be sending emails

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I would wonder why they are not emailing or texting me like they should. I can’t think of anything more rude than calling someone.

And I’m old

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If I find myself in a situation like that, I have temporarily turned off automatically sending unknown numbers to voicemail. But about 99% of my existence is sending unknowns into the ether.

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I’m not mad, you’re just an asshole.

Edit: Ah, called it. You’re just a troll.

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And what if you find yourself in a situation where you don’t know to expect a call?

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Finance, medical, family, contractors (yard guy, HVAC guy, etc.), service providers (auto shop, insurance, etc.) …

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You’re insulting people and calling THEM trolls? Truly the height of hypocrisy. I don’t have any more time to waste on you, so I’ll block you without reading your next response. Have the day you deserve.

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Yep. All of those

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Really? All of those are email or texts for me. Genuinely can’t remember the last time I recieved or sent a genuine phone call.

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LOL. Sure thing, troll.

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Well that’s your zone. Where I am its email text and voicemail. Only time I get emails is from companies I deal with regularly the rest go to VM. The odd texts I get are about 60/40 spam\phish or doc appts

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Generally I shrug off that scenario. If I need something or want something, I’m available. But if I don’t, then it’s okay to give myself permission to be unavailable.

But also, my phone number isn’t from where I currently live. Numbers that call do show up in my call logs, even if they get sent to a nonexistent voice mail. A number from my current area code may get a call back after I look up their number. But I don’t bother to look up numbers that aren’t from where I’m currently at, or numbers that call me repeatedly. Spammers use computers that automatically retry their calls, so an unreasonable number of calls immediately after one another are a dead giveaway.

Your attention is a valuable commodity. No one is entitled to it. I take a lot of steps to ensure my attention is protected from misuse - including asking a business to give me their number so I can call them first, so they’ll be ‘known’ to my phone before they try to call me.

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Here you have to pay to listen to them I think since the beginning, so voicemail was something very few people used and most of the time your grandma would leave one by accident.