TechnoCourtesy.

• Author: McCorkle, Vern C.
• Position: Brief Article

Voi-small and c-phonz, god-love 'em, can either be a big help to businesses or a downright nuisance if not used properly, courteously. Let me elucidate.

How many times have you come into work and started out the day answering your voice mail only to find messages (?) you can't decipher? A faint, chirping little voice on the other end sing-songs that she's holding a crucial message from Blair & Blair. Please call a number she recites so quickly that you can't get it even after two or three replays!

The problem is that the caller knows what she is going to say, and delivers it machine-gun style. The callee must "save and replay" costing time and causing hypertension. The theory is that if the message was important enough to call outside of the normal workday or across time zones, it is important enough to make sure the callee receives it intelligibly. So slow down, already.

"Drive Now, Call Later" is the theme of a popular bumper sticker. More truth to that, than poetry. Time was when only the wealthy or powerful few had a cell phone. Now they are as ubiquitous as air. Everybody has one, but me! The fact that I don't own a cellular telephone to this day stems from a prior lifetime-when I was working as an editor in Pittsburgh, PA. I had worked late one night, and happened to go down to the ground floor in an elevator of the 30-floor-high Alcoa Building with, who else, my boss, the president of the company. Oh, how timed dragged. Should I speak or be silent, I...