7 January 2009 - Frantic for Fran

There are, admittedly, a lot of terrific women in my life. But the one I may have missed most today is Fran. That's the name I gave to the voice of the woman on EY/Comm voice mail. (Yes, I have a habit of naming inanimate objects ranging from cars to BlackBerrys to briefcases to musical instruments. Mental issue noted.) Fran's wonderful. She is relevant, always available, organized, responsive, recognizes the simple beauty of the # key, and is kind enough to allow me to force her to give abbreviated prompts when I'm checking voice mail. You can experience the joy by calling my former office number and listening to her eagerly take your message or offer to transfer you to another extension. Magical.

So what's made me so sentimental about Fran today? The experience of trying to set up my voice mail at the office here. Now, most voice mail systems I've used are relatively straightforward with simple set-up instructions and a handy reference card that tells you, for example, the numbers or shortcuts for playing, deleting, forwarding and responding to messages. I had no doubt that this one would be no different. I, um, was mistaken.

I successfully located three pages in the German IT User Guide that was provided to me along with my laptop. How difficult could it be to follow, right? The first section had to be setup, the next for changing your spoken name or outgoing message, and then maybe a section for listening to voice mail. Well, I dialed the 5-digit extension listed in the booklet and German Fran (would it be rude to name her Drescher?) picked up and proceeded to talk at me for at least thirty seconds. No pause. No apparent prompts to enter passwords or such. I hung up on her and, based on her surly responses when I called back (with my assistant Sanja at hand to translate), she didn't take the rejection well. She repeated her diatribe, asked for a password, then asked for the mailbox number (shouldn't that come before one assigns a password to it??), and then the password again, provided a whole lot of instructions for recording my spoken name and then insisted that I record my outgoing message. At this point I asked Sanja whether there was a pre-recorded greeting (you know, in German, so I could mask my ignorance) that I could use.

No.

Really?

No.

Hmm - okay, which number do I tell callers to dial so that they can select a different extension if I'm not available? Like, "If you need immediate assistance, dial '0' and ask for my assistant Sanja at extension XXXXX."

There is no other number. If they don't want to leave a message with you they just have to call back.

Fran!!!!!!

I hung up on Drescher about this time; she was still talking and the pressure of developing a brand new outgoing message on the fly was too much for me. Not surprisingly, Sanja was looking at me like I was a little crazy, but was successfully resisting the urge to tell me so. I calmed myself, thought of a new message, and dialed back in. Drescher was, if possible, even less enthusiastic that time. She seemed to have forgotten she knew me and had me re-enter a new password and my spoken name. I finally had the new outgoing message in there and called it quits. I fear the day when someone leaves a message as I still have no idea how to retrieve them. But I suppose I should rest easy that Drescher will be hard at work chattering away at callers so perhaps they'll be dissuaded from leaving a message, too. I can hope, right? But I suspect such hope will be as misguided as my hope that we will be buying Cisco IP phones anytime soon.

Fran, wherever you are, know that you are appreciated.