Are people really this stupid?

[teyrnon]

I usually screen my calls with an answering machine. I can be a bit a difficult to understand over the phone especially with strangers. This is okay when the caller knows how to listen. The trouble is that most people don't know how to listen. And recent calls have only served to confirm my suspicions that most people who call the house line are idiots.

Over the years I've noticed a great many callers don't have a clue about answering machines. This seems really strange as answering machines are ubiquitous. Many seem to freak out and try to shout the machine down by saying "Hello? Hello?! Hello?!!" the whole time the answering machine is playing its outgoing message. This behavior fascinates me no end as many answering machines seem to not take any message if the caller is talking during the message. This is because the machine sets its noise level filtering during the outbound message. That is to say that these people in talking during the message are causing the noise level threshold to be set to a level louder than they're speaking. (I usually count this as a feature because quite frankly if someone is incapable of waiting for the beep they usually have nothing intelligent to say anyway.)

Now we come to today. I'm making supper and the phone rings. The machine answers and I hear shouting and yelling. It all sounded quite incoherent. I couldn't make out what was being said. Either by they or by the machine. This caller, whoever it is, hung up at the beep. About ten minutes later the phone rings again. The machine picks up and whoever it is managed to stay quiet during the outbound message. Then a male voice says "answering machine" and hangs up.

What is wrong with these people? Are they merely clueless or actually stupid?

Comments

[turdburgler.livejournal.com]

I hold the belief that most people are completely stupid. :)

Normally when I call someone I am not particularly prepared to leave a message, so if it is something worth leaving a message over and they don't answer, I usually call back after I've gotten my wits about me a bit and leave the message the second time. But, I also don't scream at the answering machine, and especially not during the greeting playback, so... o_O

Have you ever listened to your answering machine greeting? Does your greeting perhaps sound like a real person talking (and have a message such that it's not immediately obvious a machine has picked up)? Perhaps that might be confusing them?

I usually just leave the default message on my various voice mails so that it is pretty obvious that it's an automated message (I don't it being identified that this voice mail belongs to a girl, or otherwise identifying myself by name in a recording, but then again, I'm paranoid, heh heh heh).

One of these days I'm going to pick up the Kentucky Fried Movie DVD and rip a sound byte off of it of Klahn's answering machine greeting message during fist full of yen. One of these days!!

[cybermystic.livejournal.com]

Well, I hear it every time there's a call. The greeting message was synthesized about ten years ago with mid90s speech synthesizer software. It sounds mechanistic and artificial.

[jigsawdiva.livejournal.com]

My outgoing message was very short. The telemarketers apparently have this auto-dial thing where they thought a person answered.
Every day my machine was just full of "Hello.... hello... I'm calling from suchandsuch.. hello.... hello..?"

[cybermystic.livejournal.com]

Yours actually say who or what they represent when they call? Mine never seem to give more than "Hello...Hello...Hello."