Tuesday, January 13, 2009

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate outgoing voicemail messages that include this annoying bit: “I am currently on the phone or away from my desk” -- very common in the world of office-drone telecommunications.

It is not really necessary to provide an explanation for why you’re not answering the phone. But if you want to provide an exhaustive list of such reasons, it should go more like this: “I am either on the phone, or away from my desk, or screening your call, or gossiping about my boss’s ugly pants, or filling my mouth with Sno Caps, or googlestalking the hot new receptionist, or playing Minesweeper, or picking my teeth/nose/ear, or correcting spelling errors in an otherwise fascinating article about platypuses on Wikipedia, or typing 5318008 into a calculator and holding it upside down, or touching my tongue to both poles of a 9-volt battery, or staring into space contemplating the existential horror of soul-sucking 9-to-5 office work.”

Also, the word “currently” is usually redundant when speaking in the present tense. So knock it off.

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