I used to call one of our large customers and I got his voicemail all the time. The thing was that his message said he was on vacation but every time I left a message he would call back in a couple of hours. I just got it one day - he was really at work but could return my call or not. either that or he just forgot to update his message when he came back from vacation.
I adopted that technique but now I'm going to claim that I'm on a 'special assignment' of unspecified duty and length (probably forever) so I might not be able to return your call in a timely manner.
Back in the days when the long distance carriers were fighting over customers like hyenas over carrion, I was working in a very small company. We would get inundated by people urging us to switch to their long distance plan. We invented Brian. Brian was our telephone guy that would make that decision to switch but -wouldn't you know it? - Brian is on vacation for two weeks. That seemed to satisfy them and we always had a great laugh. It turned the annoying phonecalls into fun. One time we actually got a call back for Brian after two weeks! Those guys were persistent. I told him Brian wasn't back yet or something. Then I thought I should have told the guy that Brian got fired because he drove the boss nuts when he was always switching long distance carriers.
The latest blessing in the fone wars is caller ID. Our phone tries to say the name of the caller and sometimes it is hilarious. Caller ID is a great way to avoid calls you hate - use it, be merciless. I've even programmed the phone to drop specific phone numbers so they barely ring - that is cool and I wish the phone had more memory so I could ignore more numbers. Still, for having a land line this makes it tolerable.
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