Joe Mooney phoned.

You know you're getting old when you start telling lame Dad jokes.

We decided to spring for call display. The other day someone named Joe Mooney phoned, but didn't leave a message.

I started singing "Leave a message Mooney, moon, moon mooney" to the tune of Billy Idol's "Mony Mony".

It was hilarious and caused huge belly laughs.

Phone voice.

Everyone has a phone voice. It's the voice you use to talk on the phone. When the phone rings and you don't know who it is, your voice sounds deeper, more cautious.

Then when you recognize your friend on the other line your vocal chords relax. You smile and make yourself sound cheery.

I had a telephone interview last week and I wanted to sound enthusiastic. My normal voice is monotone and dull. No one would hire me based on my voice.

So I phoned Cindy and practiced talking enthusiastically and energetically. She laughed and said I sounded like a child. So then I made my voice sound less enthusiastic and she said I sounded depressed.

I can't win.

My boss has an extremely loud phone voice. He shouts when he's on the phone. I hate being forced to listen to other people's phone conversations.

I also hate talking to people on digital phones. They're about half a second too slow so you and your partner sound like you're constantly interrupting each other.

Remember rotary phones? I bet I wouldn't know how to use one. It would take me a few moments to figure it out.

Remember when touch tone came out? It was so fast.

Why do women secretly listen to your phone conversations?

I've noticed throughout my working career that women listen-in on private phone calls. I'll be talking on the phone to my wife, and the women nearby will appear to be working away, but they're listening to everything I say.

I know this because they will often mention something later in the day that they could have only heard through my phone call.

In my last job, one woman nearby would directly ask me, "Who were you talking to?" after listening in on my phone calls. She obviously didn't care.

Cindy confirms this is the case. She says women "can't help" listening in on phone calls because it's evolution. She says women don't focus their attention like men do. Women need to be aware of all sounds going on around them so they can "hear the baby cry".

Men, on the other hand, tune out other sounds and focus on the prey. The hunt. That's why many men don't listen to women, and women get so mad.

I can easily ignore phone conversations around me. Cindy cannot.

I remember pay phones.

Those were the days! You'd walk down the sidewalk and see a little phone stand. A payphone! The old-style ones had a slot for your quarter, a phone book in a black case, hanging from a chain, and that's about it.

The new ones had a slot for your quarter and a credit card, and a little screen with text messages in green digital numbers. The screen would say something like, "Enter a quarter to make a phone call."


How quaint. I remember you'd dial a long-distance number and it would wait for a moment, as it calculates. Then the screen would ask for $3.40. As you talked, a voice would come on and tell you to enter more money if you were running low.


I remember lines of pay phones in malls. There would be numerous people chatting on the phones. Occasionally, you'd have to lineup and you'd become annoyed at the person who was taking so much time on the phone.

As soon as you hung up, you looked at your hands in disgust. They had to be so dirty. Not to mention that your mouth was basically sharing the receiver with the last person's bad breath molecules. You wanted badly to use hand-sanitizer, but it wasn't invented yet.

I can hear the office phone from the bathroom.

Just figured out today that I can hear our phone ring from the bathroom. Normally I wouldn't care. However, in the afternoons I'm often the only one in the office.

When I step out, I'm quite sensitive about missing phone calls. I know I shouldn't be. I mean, if someone has to call back, so what.

It's just that I can't relax while urinating or defecating when I hear the phone ringing. My first instinct is to dash back to the office - obviously impossible with my pants around my ankles.

I have dashed back. If I'm down the hall and almost at the bathroom, I'll run back if the phone rings. Once I was actually outside the building and I heard the phone. I ran back inside our office. (We're right by the front door.)

Sometimes people see me do the dash and they must think, "That guy is dedicated to taking his important phone call."

Yet almost 100% of the phone calls are unimportant and unnecessary. They ask questions which are clearly answered on our website.

A few interesting things about our phones:

• We have 4 lines and only 2 full time people. We often say, "Call on hold for you 3025" or "Call holding on 3069", which makes us feel very, busy important and big.

• I've been here 4 months and I still haven't transferred a call. I simply get up and walk to the person's office and say, "call for you on hold". I do have the one page instructions on how to transfer and I think I know how to do it, just haven't bothered yet.

• Each of our phones is a different volume. The main reception phone at the front desk is super loud. If I'm sitting there and the phone rings, I jump.

• One of the phones rings a split second before the others. So we get a mini 0.5 second warning that the phones are about to ring. This could be very handy and convenient, but is not.

• I have this huge desire to stay home one day when everyone else is gone and just forward all the office phone lines to my home phone. I'd log onto my email from home and work on my files from my home computer. Why bother going into the office in this day and age?