The value of voicemail
Text messages, e-mails, missed phone calls, “Yo’s — it’s easier than ever to let someone know you want to get a hold of them. In many ways, the voicemail is a relic in the eyes of millennials and those younger, but a staple of etiquette for Gen X’ers and older.
This was the precise problem that Leslie Horn ran into with her mother. She just wouldn’t stop leaving voicemails.
But then something happened that made her change the way she viewed the end of unanswered phone calls forever: her father passed away.
Upon the passing of her father, Horn’s phone rang for months. Many of them ended at the machine.
It was here that she realized a few things about these messages. People often ended up saying more than they do in an actual conversation (in an endearing way), it’s nice to hear a voice other than your own sometimes, and that there was a special place reserved for all the messages people left her throughout the years waiting in storage.
Old friends with stories, the occasional ramblings of a drunk dial, and one very special message for her birthday last year: A voicemail from her dad.
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