If your job has you calling lots of people who usually don't answer their phone right away - if you work in a newsroom, for instance -you waste a chunk of your life waiting to leave a message.

How much time?

First you get a personal message: "You have reached voice mail for such and so. I'm not available because I'm away from my desk or on the phone. But if you'll leave a detailed message after the beep, with your name and phone number and the time you called, I'll call you back as soon as I can. Have a nice day."

None of that is information you absolutely need.

You already know whom you called.

You can tell the person is not answering the phone. And you don't really care if it's because the person is on the phone, away from the desk or just refusing to pick up.

You already know how an answering machine or voice mail works. You don't need to be reminded to wait for the tone. And you don't have to be assured that the person will call back. Either he will or he won't; time will tell.

With some systems, even that extensive message is not enough to wait through. It is followed by the machine's voice repeating the instructions you just heard.

Now can you leave your message? Not quite.

First: "To leave a call-back number, press 5."

Nobody in the history of voice mail systems has ever left a call-back number. At least everybody I ask tells me they never do. But still, you have to spend that added second and a half before you can finally - finally! - leave your message, get off the phone and back to work and call somebody else.

The whole thing takes, what, maybe 10 or 15 seconds on every call.

Ten calls like that in a day, on average, are routine. That is two and a half minutes, at least, of wasted time.

If you work 250 days a year - assuming two weeks' vacation, when you stay off the phone to business contacts - that is 625 minutes wasted waiting for long-winded messages to end.

In case you're not keeping track,that's more than 10 hours a year.

If you work at least 30 years, you spend something like 312 hours of your life drumming your fingers on the desk while listening to recordings that mouth unnecessary words.

Think of all the work you could have gotten done instead. Of think of the time you could have spent relaxing, letting your blood pressure subside, or thinking of something pleasant.

I guess the people recording elaborate greetings on their answering machines just want to be polite.

Sometimes they add words to the effect that your call is important to them. How insincere can you get?

They cannot possibly know if this call is important to them without answering the phone and learning what it's about. It might just be a recorded call from somebody offering to refinance the mortgage on their house.

I think I'll change my own phone greeting now. All it really needs is a beep. (hh)