Get the Message

Voicemail pisses me off. Is there really anyone alive who doesn't know how to leave a message? I'm so bored of calling my friends and hearing, 'at the tone please leave your message.' Who doesn't know this? What, is there someone out there leaving laundry? A token of thanks? Their wife? And they follow that nugget up with the priceless, 'when you are finished recording you may hang up.' Because, let me tell you, before they put that in, I'd be four or five days stuck on the line. Oh! Put down the phone! I thought if I just hung on in there, I'd fry my brain with the microwaves and put us all out of misery. Dialling for my messages is just as bad. My voicemail woman has nothing but disdain for me. You have noooo new messages, she scorns, I can almost hear eyes rolling. When I do get one, she can hardly contain her surprise. Oh! she says, You have one new message! And just as I'm about to laugh in her face, my mum comes on the line.