OK, something's steaming the lens of my telescope, so bear with me. Why must outgoing telephone messages from federal government offices be in both official languages? It's a staggering waste of time.
As a well-connected astronomer, I dial a lot of government phone numbers and rountinely spend up to two minutes listening to people tell me twice that they are not around, in two separate languages.
Did I miss a bone-headed Treasury Board directive? Are public servants forced to do this? As a popular comedian once remarked, I think we're all pretty familiar with the whole answering-machine-please-leave-a-message drill no matter what language we speak. The thing beeps and you talk into the phone. That's it. There are no special instructions, cryptic Da Vinci Code passwords or skill-testing questions.
The outgoing bilingual phone message is a gigantic time burglar. If Stats Can were to study this phenomenon, I'm certain we would discover it is costing the Canadian economy hundreds of millions of dollars in productivity annually while people sit stupefied at their desks, listening for cumulative hours on end to repetitive and entirely annoying messages. And then having to hang up because they forgot why they called in the first place. (Yes, laugh if you must, but this has happened to me.)
What's next, English, French, then Inuit throat singing versions of the I'm-not-here spiel to let us know the bureaucrat is in yet another meeting? Don't get me wrong, I support the whole idea of bilingualism and the Official Languages Act. But there has to be a smarter way to do this.
So a fervent plea to the tens of thousands of federal employees who regularly read this blog: How about simply answering with, "Hello, you've reached Wanda Prudentmanager's voice mail. Je ne suis pas disponible en ce moment. Please leave a message. Merci."
This will work for 99.9 per cent of callers. And trust me, you don't want a message from the other 0.1 per cent anyway.
