Answers by machine
I keep coming home to find these messages on my answering machine. Unfamiliar voices say: "Hello? May I speak to Jed Hartman? Hello? Are you there? Hello?" and then they hang up.
What I don't get is this: what part of "This is Jed's answering machine" do they not understand?
I think they must be calling by computer, and it detects the pickup but doesn't detect the answering machine, and by the time it puts the human on the line, my answering machine's outgoing message has finished playing. Perhaps I should make the message longer.
While I'm kvetching, I may as well say this: why can't those computers do their job faster? I absolutely hate it when I pick up the phone and say, "Hello, this is Jed" (as I almost always do) and there's a long pause, and I repeat myself, and then a voice comes on the line that says "Hello? May I speak to Jed Hartman?" Surely the computer can detect a pickup and transfer control to a human in less than ten seconds.
On the other hand, I'm gradually learning to hang up if there's no response to my initial greeting within about a second. I figure if it's important, they'll call back. So I suppose the computer delay is to my advantage.