I HATE CELL PHONES!!!!

OK, pet peeve day....

Lately, I've had a lot of customers leave voicemails on their cell phones.

Now, this isn't bad, but I fail to understand how they expect me to decipher what they're saying when they're tooling down the road in their big loud diesel rig through some backroad where they don't have coverage really well all the while yelling.

It usually goes something like this....
"I Ne[kshhh] some[kshh]...to ...all me about Biodiese[kshh]. It's really impo[ksh]nt that someone call. You can ca...me at 55[ksh] 455 1[mumbled]23[ksh]...please ca[ksh]" and then the call drops.

I mean how in the world do people expect me to actually decipher that? It's been really bad lately too. I get calls from all over the place where people are trying to leave a message and it's either cut off (because their phone dies) or mumbled, or you just can't understand what they're saying because there's so much background noise going on.

My other pet peeve goes something like this....
"I need to talk to someone. Today! I have an urgent issue that is really important that I hear back from someone. So please call me today because I really need to get an answer on this. OK? Thanks, Bye".

Notice something missing? THEIR PHONE NUMBER!!!! SHEESH! How can I call someone back if they don't give me a phone number? What do they expect me to do? Be a mind reader?

I've had both the cell phone calls and the "can't figure out how to leave a phone number" crowd lately. It's amazing. Someone wants me to call them back soooo badly, but yet doesn't leave a phone number.

My other pet peeve is people that take FOREVER leaving you a message, speaking really slowly, usually pausing in between to think about what they want to say, then, they get to the end and say their phone number so fast you have to replay the message 5 times just to get it written down.

Man, some days I just want to reach through the phone & strangle some of these people!

So, here's my tips for leaving a message if you call a business.
1) Speak clearly so that you can be understood
2) DO NOT (I repeat) DO NOT leave a message while talking on a cell phone (if you must do so, don't do it while traveling down some back-road with the window down where you don't have coverage and where it's so loud in the car that someone can't hear you.
3) Be brief. People have a business to run. The last thing they want to do first thing in the morning is hear your dissertation about why they need to call you back. You can explain that to them when they call you. Just tell them who you are, a BRIEF reason for why they should call you back, and then leave your number
4) SPEAK SLOWLY AND CLEARLY! ESPECIALLY WHEN GIVING YOUR PHONE NUMBER! (It helps to REPEAT your phone number too).
5) Don't yell on a message. It'll just piss the person taking the message on the other end off and you'll instantly move to the last one on the list to call back
6) If you just called 5 minutes ago, calling again and leaving another message ain't gonna win ya brownie points. It just means they have to listen to TWO of your messages now which means that's more time spent listening to messages and less time picking up the phone to call you back.

Anyway, you get the picture. Be brief, be specific, and leave your number clearly.

Oh, and here's my plug for Verizon Wireless.
I hate Sprint! I hate T-Mobile! I hate AT&T!

People talking to me on Sprint, T-Mobile, or AT&T seem to have a lot of static noise in the background when they call in (sometimes when it's bad I ask who their carrier is). Verizon though is crystal clear. I don't know what those people do, but when someone calls in and you can tell it's a cell phone but it's still crystal clear, I can tell they're on a Verizon phone. The conversation is just so much cleaner.

OK, one last pet peeve about cell phones & I'm done.
I hate it when I talk to people wearing those wireless bluetooth, good for nothing, headsets. You can barely tell what they're saying and you have to listen REALLY carefully to catch their words.

I still haven't found one that I like myself either. Garbage, garbage, garbage.

If you find one that actually works, I may be all ears, but for now, I prefer a CORDED headset over those stupid lame Blue-tooth thingies....

OK, that's my rant for the evening....

-Graydon