Tales from the old-timer Voice Mail - Blessing or Curse?
Back in the “Good Old Days” when I was a Social Worker in what was then called The Marinette County Public Welfare Department, we “signed out” on a board when going away to see clients, listing our destination; e.g. Pembine, and giving an estimated time of return.
When the receptionist got a phone call for a staff member, she would glance up at the board and tell the caller, “We expect him back by about two o’clock and I will tell him you called.”
We had only about 20 people in the agency back then.
Now that department, with Public Health and Adapt added, has more than 100 employees; the receptionist would be unable to keep up with the calls.
So along came voice mail. Used properly, it can be a highly efficient means of communication, but it doesn’t always work that way. It can become a barrier to communication.
Busy people use a stock, never changing response for anticipated calls; “I’m not at my desk right now, but when you hear the ‘beep’ leave your name and number, and I will call you back as soon as possible.”
That message, it seems for some people, stays there as a permanent blockage, whether at their desks or not, protecting them until such time as they are good and ready to handle all of the calls at one time. The message will be unchanged while the man goes off to South Dakota to hunt pheasants, or he goes to Stevens Point for a conference, or stays home on vacation.
Voice mail can be a way to improve accessibility to a busy person, speed up communication, gain efficiency, and reduce the frenzy of a modern office.
It can also block accessibility, insulate public servants from the people they serve, and create “voice mail rage” in people trying to get through to them.
Former Wisconsin State Senator Gary Drzewiecki told me once about what he called a “farm boy sting operation.” He suspected a mid-level state employee of never answering his phone calls, so Drzewiecki stationed a friend by a glass door, then went to another phone and called him. The phone rang four times, and the subject took no notice, merely fiddled with some papers on his desk. Drzewiecki then got the canned message, “I’m not at my desk right now. You can leave your name and number after the beep, and I will return your call as soon as I can.”
Once I called a Marinette County official to verify a single fact. I am not a “telephone yacker.” I don’t engage in 30-minute phone calls. I got the message that he was on another call. I did leave my number, and he called back the next day!
More recently I called one of the county departments from my home about 1:00 PM, just the department not a person, to get the name of a man who had attended a meeting that I was writing up for the newspaper. The return call came to my home the next day! Fortunately I had gotten what I needed from a different department. We are a newspaper and we go to press on a deadline.
The voice mail message should be updated, with an estimate of when the person will be back. ”I’ll be gone until about 10:30” would be nice, or “I will be deer hunting all the rest of this week.”
Many bureaucrats screen their calls, to decide if and when they will call back. Persons low on the totem pole may wait forever for that promised return call.
We can’t go back to the days when a frantic switchboard operator fielded more calls than she could handle, and scribbled notes for staffers to call so and so, but we do have to go back to the good old days when employees knew the purpose of a governmental agency is to serve. Voice mail should be an aid to that process, not an impediment.
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