Do me a favor, do NOT leave a message after the beep...

I have a serious love/hate relationship with my phone.  I enjoy the convenience of having one and yet hate getting calls.  Strange, I know.  

I'm not really a phone person.  I enjoy talking to people, I'm very social, but kind of on my terms.  What do I mean?  Okay, for starters, there's the 9:00 rule:  Do not call me BEFORE 9 a.m. and do not call me AFTER 9 p.m.  That just works for me.  If you are calling me before 9 a.m., I'm not answering the phone.

Next, if you call and get my machine and leave a message, don't recite a novel.  Tell me that you called and leave your number...as a matter of fact, I even SAY THAT on my message, "Leave your name and number after the beep, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible".  If you leave a 45 minute message, now you've annoyed me and I'm not calling back any time soon.  The only reason to leave a really long message is if someone has died or there is some sort of comparable emergency.  Leaving your life story on the machine, isn't endearing me to wanting to call you back.

Next, if you leave a message, don't call back every 15 minutes and then HANG UP before the message comes on because you know what?  I have caller i.d. and I know that you've called 47 times.  Seriously, I have an uncle doing this right now.  We don't really speak, when he calls he is obnoxious and offensive and I don't enjoy talking to him but he will harass the heck out of me and the answering machine until I break and talk to him.  Then I'm mad and not at all happy and have a major attitude about it.  Our relationship should not be a surprise to him, and yet once a year he'll do this until I want to smash the phone in to a million little pieces!

Oh, how I long for the days of the smoke signal...