Phone Sex

Now that I've got your attention, here are some of my random thoughts regarding talking on the phone.

Isn't it annoying when you call someone up and get their machine, but you have to wait 15 seconds before you can leave a message. "If you'd like to leave a numeric page, please press 5. If you'd like to page this person, please press 7". What the hell is a numeric page anyways?! Paging a person? I'm calling a cell phone, not a beeper. Unless I'm mistaken, most people leave messages via voicemail, so why not make that the first option? (Note: Some providers let you press '1' right away to bypass that other shit, but others don't.)

Has anyone else out there noticed that when you call customer service nowadays, they keep you on the line for 3 minutes to make sure that they did a good job. I recently called up my cable provider with a problem, and the lady quickly helped me out. I said "Thanks" and thought I was home free, but then it was a non-stop barrage of questions such as: "Is there anything else I can do for you today?.... Was I helpfull in assisting you this afternoon?....If you have any more problems, please don't hesitate to call...You do realize this call was monitored for quality assurance, don't you?...Thanks again for calling Charter Communications...Did you catch The Real World last night?"

There are some people with whom your close enough with so that moments of silence on the phone aren't akward at all. Othertimes, silence on the phone is so akward its not even funny. Once I was talking to a girl on the phone, and when I asked her a question, I didn't get a response back. 20 seconds pass by and I'm thinking that this is this most akward silence in the history of mankind. Turns out she got disconnected -- I suppose, in hindsight, I could have said something witty such as "hello? are you there?" but I was very caught up in the whole akwardness of it all.

Funny Story: I have a friend who is bad at remembering names, and often times,he'll exchange phone numbers with people whose names he can't remember. He doesn't want to be rude and say "What was your name again?" so he just enters the number into his phone with random letters as the name, or under amusing headings such as "guy with blue shirt".

Anyone out there have phone stories etc. to divulge?

P.S Studying for the bar exam is no joke.