Leaving a voicemail. It’s an ordeal! First, you get the beep. The ominous beep. It’s like a timer starts ticking on your verbal dexterity. You have to be concise, yet informative. You have to be personable, but not *too* chummy. And you can’t *mumble*! Because then they’ll call back and say, ‘Sorry, I couldn’t quite make out what you said at the end.’ Oh, so now *I’m* the problem? I’m trying to compress an entire conversation into 30 seconds for a machine! It’s a performance! For an audience that isn’t even there! And then you hang up and immediately think of the perfect thing you *should* have said. The voicemail regret. It’s real.
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