Leave a message after the beep

Voicemail is maddening. We don’t like leaving it, and we don’t like having a string of voicemails to listen to. The only thing worse is….no voicemail. I don’t know how technology trends evolve in different cultures, but voicemail hasn’t taken off in India. This includes colleagues, drivers, family members. So as a call recipient, when you see someone has called you, you call them back to find out what they wanted. As a caller, the “monkey is always on your back.” With voicemail, you call someone; if they aren’t there, you leave a message, and it’s off your personal “to do” list. Absent voicemail, the problem is yours, until you reach the targeted person. I think there is a pricing issue, in that the caller pays for voicemails that they are leaving, if the callee even has voicemail as an option. (not sure about this.)  And if people aren’t accustomed to leaving voicemails, they feel strange talking to an inanimate machine. I wonder if this is an intrinsic cultural characteristic that won’t change, or an evolutionary one that will change soon, albeit several years behind the west.