Does it bother anyone else that the cell phone companies both charge us for each minute used, _and_ build in almost a complete minute of little instructions each time you get someone's voicemail?

Mine goes something like this:

"Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice mail system."

_(Really?)_

"The person you are trying to reach is unavailable right now."

_(I know this, that's why I've reached voicemail)_

"To leave a message, please wait for the tone."

_(Yes, we've done this before.)_

_(There are *some* systems that have a "Press 1 to leave a message" option here -- still, there's quite a bit of time invested in the few phrases above)_

"To Send a numeric page, please push # now."

_(This is somewhat helpful, but seems a little niche to me -- how many people actually use this feature? I don't. I never have. I wish I could turn this little message off)_

"Leave a message at the tone"

_(Yes, you already mentioned that)_

"When you have finished recording, you may hang up"

_(Gee, thanks for your permission)_

"Or press * for more options"

_(Again, I feel like this is information that should be in your phone manual, not repeated each time I make a call.)_

We're paying for these seconds. It would be interesting to average out how much a person pays for these phrases in a year (ie, the average person places 600 voicemail calls in a year (wild guess, 2/day), the entire message is ~30 seconds (being conservative here), so for the year you're looking at 600 * 30 = 18000 seconds / 60 = *300 minutes/year*).