I'm in the mood for voicemail

Anybody who has voicemail knows you can waste entire minutes every day, sorting through messages, erasing and saving and prioritizing.

Researchers at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (who apparently have a lot of time on their hands) have come up with a software that will prioritize your voicemail on the basis of the callers' moods.

Emotive Alert software measures the volume and pitch of the voice and the ratio of words to pauses in each message, then compares them to eight "acoustical fingerprints" representing different emotional states: happy, sad, excited, calm, urgent, not urgent, formal and informal.

Critics say this technology could have a downside. Telemarketers likely will figure out how to leave messages that score highly for "urgency," so they'll go to the top of the list. Every time you check your voicemail, all the most urgent messages will be "spam." Just like your e-mail is now.

Telemarketing is only the most obvious hitch with emotion-recognition software, however. I can think of lots of other problems:

--How will the software analyze those prerecorded messages used by doctor's offices, where everything is a robotic drone except the time and date of your next appointment, which is filled in by the chirpy receptionist? Will the resulting pauses and tone changes move the call to the bottom of the list? If you've got a voicemail message that begins, "The results of your medical tests are in," that might be a top priority.

--Will heavy breathing count as pauses?

--Does "formal" language make it a priority message? I'd be much less interested in a formal message about a picayune legal matter than in the informal language used by a redneck threatening to "come over to yore house right now and stomp a mudhole in ya."

--"Excited" rarely means a top-flight message. It usually just means the caller himself is excited, often for no good reason. My dog could leave an "excited" message.

--Does a "sad" message automatically become a low priority? Seems to me that news of Aunt Ruth's demise, while sad, might be the most important message of the day.

--Why should "happy" messages go to the top? Are we so shallow that we always want the good news first?

--Isn't such software biased against plodders? Just because there are pauses doesn't mean the message is unimportant. If the caller is distracted while leaving the message, does that push him to the bottom of the list? What if the distraction is, say, a standoff with the police?

--Doesn't this put a lot of pressure on the person leaving the message? It's already hard enough to create a brief message while remembering to leave a phone number, a good time to be reached, etc. If you knew your mood was being measured, too, couldn't the result be panic? And why isn't "panic" on that list of emotions? I would think that would be a top priority.

--For that matter, why stop there? If you're going to sort your messages by emotion, how about "anger?" Angry messages might be the ones you want first (see "mudhole" above). Other emotional states that should be measured: love, hate, rancor, loneliness, fear, envy, arousal, pity, "bad vibes," consternation, guilt, gratitude, euphoria, shyness, delirium, impatience, depression, sympathy, playfulness, boredom, "just friends," drunkenness, exaggeration, stupidity, regret, resentment, menace, misery and "the willies."

Finally, and most importantly, there's this issue: If you get so many voicemail messages every day that you need to prioritize them by mood, then you're getting too many messages. You need to slow down. Take yourself out of circulation. Get an unlisted number.

Too much voicemail can give you the willies.

Today's calls: Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob and Ann

An open letter to the people who formerly had our telephone number:

Dear Bob and Ann,

It's been a year now since we moved into our new house, and we're still getting phone calls for you. Sure, the number of calls has dwindled, but we continue to get one every day or two.

We want you to know you're on the minds of people here. They're still calling. We do our best to be nice to them.

It was strange at first. Day and night, the phone ringing, people asking for "Bob" or "Ann." Some days, we'd get calls from four or five different people, all seeking someone who didn't live at our house. You were getting more calls than we were.

We had to wonder: How long had the phone company kept our new number out of circulation before assigning it to us? (Clearly, the answer was "not long enough.") Who were you, Bob and Ann, and why didn't you alert people that you were getting a new phone number? How did you get so danged popular?

This wasn't your usual "wrong number" problem. If we said "wrong number" and hung up, the phoners would figure they'd misdialed and would call right back. They knew Bob and Ann's number, by golly, had it right there in front of them, and this was it. We learned to say, "Bob and Ann don't have this number anymore."

Most callers responded with the quick "sorry" and disconnect you'd expect. But some felt moved to quiz us. Where had Bob and Ann gone? Did we know a new number for them? They hadn't mentioned anything about moving away . . .

We felt these callers' pain, but we had no answers for them. We tried to find your new number, Bob and Ann. (We knew your last name, of course; all those callers had informed us.) But you weren't listed anywhere.

We told ourselves the problem would resolve itself in time. People would learn your whereabouts, and they'd stop calling us, looking for you. But the calls kept coming.

As the months went by, we started to feel a certain kinship with you, Bob and Ann, even though we've never met. We began to worry about you. How come nobody knew your new number? Were you getting word of all the medical and dental appointments the offices kept calling to confirm? Wasn't it dangerous to miss those appointments? Were your very lives in jeopardy?

We began to speculate on what could've happened to you. People don't just up and disappear, leaving no forwarding address or phone number. Had there been some terrible accident? An act of terrorism?

Was your vanishing part of some bigger secret? Had you fled town to escape a scandal? Were you dodging creditors? Were you in the witness protection program? Had you been kidnapped by a cult? Were you abducted by aliens?

We became so concerned, we even considered alerting the authorities (or at least the tabloid press) to your apparent disappearance. But we decided to write this letter instead.

So, Bob and Ann, if you're out there, let us hear from you. Tell us where you've gone. At the very least, give us your current phone number so we can pass it along to our callers.

You reached out and touched many people here. Your friends are worried about you. And so are we.

So give us a call, Bob and Ann. Please.

You know the number.

(Editor's note: Nearly four years later, and we still regularly get calls for Bob and Ann.)

Hello? Hello? Aw, hell

If you read business news, then you know phone response centers are one of today's growth industries. Every time you turn around, there's another article about a new phone center opening, providing jobs for hundreds of people who'll take customers' calls.

So here's the question: How come, when you call a computer company or a governmental agency or an insurance claims office, there's no one to answer your call right away? Instead, you're subjected to Voicemail Hell, where you must "press 'one'" to get through complicated menus of choices before -- someday -- a human being comes on the line.

My theory long has been that voice mail is simply a stalling tactic, something to keep you busy while the phone workers finish their doughnuts. It doesn't really matter which buttons you push, as long as you're willing to stay on the line. Eventually, some operator will tire of that blinking light and answer your call.

But lately I've found that Voicemail Hell has become truly eternal. If you don't press a button, then the recorded message repeats until you do. And repeats. And repeats.

And heaven help you if you punch the wrong button. Might as well hang up and start over.

Those of us who run home businesses spend large portions of each day in Voice Mail Hell. For those of you who manage to avoid it, here's a sampling of what you're missing (with commentary):

"Thank you for calling Endless Delay Incorporated, a division of Satanic Industries. Your call is important to us--"

(Not important enough for someone to answer the phone.)

"--so please stay on the line."

(Forever.)

"All operators are busy now. Your call will be answered in the order it was received."

(And you're No. 6,429 on the list.)

"Endless Delay Incorporated offers a variety of special services for our call-in customers. Please listen carefully to the following menu."

(Zzzzz…)

"To hear this menu in English, press 'one' now. For Spanish, press 'two.' For Mandarin, press 'three.' For Lithuanian, press 'four'--

"You have pressed 'one' for English. To hear these messages in standard American English, press 'one.' For British English, press 'two.' If you're calling from Alabama, y'all press 'three'--"

"If you know your party's extension, please dial it now."

(If I knew that, I wouldn't be listening to this blankety-blank recording!)

"To speak to someone in Customer Service, press 'one' now. If you have a Technical Support question, press 'two.' If you have a problem with one of our products, press 'three.' If you are responding to a product recall, press 'four.' If you are placing an obscene call, press 'five'…"

(I've forgotten why I was calling. Maybe if I just stay on the line, someone will remind me.)

"You have pressed an invalid number."

(But I didn't press a number!)

"To speak to someone in Customer Service--"

(Here, I'll press 'one.' OK? Happy now?)

"Someone with Customer Service will be with you shortly. Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line."

(Perfect. I can't just hang up now. Too much time has been invested.)

"Your call may be monitored for quality control."

(That's creepy. Who's monitoring it? The FBI? And if this company cared about quality control, wouldn't they just answer the phone in the first place?)

"All operators are busy now."

(Doing what? Having a Tupperware party? If they're not answering the phone, what else have they got to do all day?)

"Your call is important to us."

(So you said.)

"Please stay on the line."

(Aaaargh!)

Finally, finally, a real live human comes on the line, saying, "Customer Service. This is (insert unpronounceable foreign name here). How may I help you today?"

I explain what I need. And the operator says I've reached the wrong department. I need Tech Services, not Customer Service. And the operator offers to transfer me.

Then I'm back in Voicemail Hell, on permanent hold, listening to how important my call is and how everyone's too busy to take it.

I know I've reached the true depths of eternal misery when I find myself longing for Muzak.