One of my long-standing pet peeves is that caller ID is not voicemail. I’m OK with someone who calls right back because they missed a call, but anything over a couple of minutes doesn’t meet my definition of "calls right back."
I developed this pet peeve when caller ID was introduced in Canada while I was on my mission. We would get phone calls along the lines of "Hello?" "You called me."
What I really wanted to say was "No, you called me," but I figured that wasn’t a missionaryish kind of thing to do. I will admit that I was pretty terse when we got a phone call at 3:00 in the morning. That one went something like:
Me: "Hello?"
Night owl: "You called me."
Me: "We’re missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Do you want to learn about Jesus Christ?"
Night owl: "No."
Me: "Good night."
Rather restrained, wouldn’t you agree?
Back to the point of this rant — I just got a phone call that went like this:
Me: "Hello?"
Dave: "Someone called me from this number."
Me: "Did they leave a message?"
Dave: "No." <some explanation of how the phone doesn’t work when he’s out of town>
Me: "It might have been my wife, but I don’t know who called you or what it was about."
Dave: <explains his job> – Ah ha! He’s thinking he missed out on some business
Me: "I still don’t know who would have called you."
Dave: "OK. Well tell her that Dave called."
So let it be known that caller ID is not voice mail. If I don’t leave you a message, you don’t need to call me back. Unless you’re calling on behalf of Publisher’s Clearing House and have a check with my name on it. I’m OK with it then.