Please leave a message

What we will endeavor to do with this time together is learn how to compose a proper voice mail message. With much experience under my belt of leaving many creative voice mail messages and being in a family that likes to mess with each other I believe I can draw on my experience as well as some common sense and just plain humor. There are things that I think are necessary to a good voice mail message that will help you "win friends and gain influence". I guarantee.

Let's look at some no no's:

1. Under no circumstance should you leave a message "you know what to do" or "you know the drill." Why? Because of Dylan McKay, that's way. This tool introduced us to the world of "cool" away messages. Do you really want to have the voice mail that Dylan would choose for you. This guy dated Brenda and you don't date crazy. It's a rule you don't break. We are all sad that his girlfriend, the noxema girl, was accidentally killed by her own fathers hit men but none of us are without baggage. Steer clear of 90210.. da da da da... da da da da ... da da .

2. The fake out is very rarely pulled off well and it is best not to attempt unless you got some serious game. Some folks accidentally do this by starting their voice mail with "hey". This is confusing because you don't know if you got them or not.

3. Stay away from impersonations. You know better and I checked and Rich Little is not dead but he is Canadian so lets not burden our friends with impersonations.

You have to be your self in the voice mail world. If your funny it's okay but not to silly so that when you get those "someone has.... " you don't have some zanny message. Also of the greatest importance is time. By my research (I counted 1-1000 with my fingers) you have 7.2 seconds with your audience. If you are good, say like me, then you can get by with 10 seconds but you better be bringing your A-game. I have routinely done this but I have really tried to get myself down to 8.0 seconds. Some people were complaining that my away message was using up their anytime minutes. Those people were a little up tight and the stick up their buts had sticks up their buts or as they say "you could stick a lump of coal (in his fist) and in two weeks you would get a diamond."-had to clean that up for the kids

I just changed mine and shortened it some, kept some subtle humor and of course referenced the greatest show ever to grace the air waves, Arrested Development. The John the Baptist of TV shows as my friend calls it.

Hope I have given you some good help and would love to have more feed back on why I annoy the crap out of you or how we can do voice mail better.