When the new school was built, we switched over to a high-tech, fancy phone system. It's high-tech and fancy to me, but it's probably the very phone system you office people use on a regular basis. Along with said phone system, each teacher was provided, yet again, with a voice mailbox. After a 30 minute training period regarding the phone system and voicemail, we were sent on our merry way. I dragged my feet setting up my voicemail because frankly, I don't give a damn.
In the age of email and text messaging, voicemail seems to archaic. I hate leaving to messages just about as much as I hate receiving them. It's either a "hey, it's me" message that simply says "call me back," or it's a ten minute message in which a friend tells you "sometimes I just think it would be easier to be a lesbian. I hope God didn't just hear that." (that's for you, HH). But I don't get those sorts of messages at work. Usually I get parents calling about so-and-so and such-and-such.
Ok, so I dragged my feet setting this business up. This was all in an attempt to be untouchable for a while. And it worked. But then we all got yelled at for not setting up our accounts, and I was finally forced to record my message after the beep.
It takes an act of Congress to get me to actually check my messages, because there's no little blinking light to tell me that I have any. One time I went the better part of 2 months without checking it and had something like 7 messages, 4 of which from the same angry parent. My bad. I have now become much better at checking my messages, which brings us to today.
During lunch today I decided to check my messages. It's one of those deals where you pick up a phone, you hit a button that looks like an envelope (which I think is hilarious), push the star button, type your extension, enter your five digit pin (why 5?? everything else in the world is 4!), and from then on, it's hands free. You tell the pleasant computer lady what you want her to do.
So she tells me that I have one unheard message. To which I tell her, "play message." And like a good girl, she does. Except that I realized I missed the phone number at the beginning, and needed her to replay the message. And this is where things went wonky. This English teacher, who understands and appreciates all of the nuances of the English language, asks the mechanical woman to "listen to message again." Which she didn't understand (too wordy?). I try again, "repeat message." Again, she didn't understand. At this point I am clearly frustrated. Why can't she just understand what I'm trying to say? Several teachers with me in the workroom offer words of encouragement, and coach me on which word the mechanical woman understands. My final try was "replay message," and she did.
Why can't this machine understand the subtlety of the English language. She should have a thesaurus in her gigabyte head and understand these things.
After all, she's the one working for us.
1 comment:
1. I'll think twice before leaving you a vmail again.
2. What was the name of the computer that beat the jeopardy all-stars? He could have understood that you wanted the messages replayed.
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