Cell Phone Hell

by Swan Rubins

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, but lately it is getting worse and worse. Does anyone else realize the cell phone conspiracy that’s going on? I don’t mean the fact that everyone has one (hell, I’ve had one since I was 13), but the fact that people are getting screwed more and more by the cell phone companies.

“How are they eating my minutes, Swan?” Well, little inquisitive reader, I am so glad you asked. Let’s start back in the beginning when voice mail came around. It was simply your voice saying something like “Hi, it’s Swan, leave a message,” followed by a beep, then people had the common sense to just leave a message. So, what was done was done and it all took less than a minute. It was nice.

Now, when you reach someone’s voice mail, there is a recording such as, “To leave a page, press 5, to fax this person press one, for mailbox options press 7, to leave a message press 8 or stay on the line.” So, we’re supposed to press 8 or whatever, leave a message, and then hang up...unless of course you are of the HUGE majority that pages people through cell phones, faxes with your cell phone, have some sort of plan in which you want to leave the message as urgent (meaning, well, nothing), or if you have low self-esteem and must listen and edit your messages in case you “accidentally” left the message of “Hi John, Swan here, I just wanted to say that I know we haven’t talked since we were in middle school, but I wanted to tell you that your eyes seem like little blue pools of love, and tell you about the shrine I have in my closet that includes a piece of crust from the jelly sandwich you ate when you were 7 and a lock of hair I stole from your football helmet when we were 16. I love you and masturbate to thoughts of our future children every night and just wanted to tell you to call me.” Then realize in your haste of love professing, that you may not want to leave that on John’s voice mail and need options to delete it.

Nonetheless, we all must listen to these options before we ever place the message. I think I’ve figured out why: it is all simply a way to try to get you to talk for 1:01 minutes so the cell phones can round you up. What finally made me snap was last week when T-Mobile changed my voice mail system so it no longer had the time and date before each message- that too was now an option you had to listen to and decide whether or not to accept. There also is a longer waiting time between messages and the lady on the recording talks slower. I really can’t take it any longer. Is there some kind of option like “No, I don’t want everyone to have to listen to a table of options before leaving me a message because my friends are too smart to need a table of options in order to simply say ‘Hey, it’s Erin, call me back,’ and furthermore, if I give someone my number, and he can’t figure out how to leave a message, I would like to add T-Mobile to my screening process of siphoning losers out of my dating pool”?

It all just fires me up.