Here’s how not to set up your answering machine, if you’re a business that wants contact with the outside world. This is more-or-less what happened when I dialed a nunber recently in pursuit of my work.

Machine Voice: You have reached Three Initial Corp. If you know your party’s extension, please dial it now. To search by last name, please dial 1.

Silence.

As it happened, I didn’t know the name of the person who could help me. That was one of my questions.

Continued silence.

I thought about dialing 1, just to see what would happen. Or picking a name like Smith, just to see what would happen. But I had some business to conduct, so I didn’t want to go off on a whimsical tangent, as much as I like those.

Click. Click.

Machine Voice: You have reached the voice mailbox of Random Name. Please…

I had no idea if that was the person whom I needed to talk to or not. I left a message. I’ve yet to hear back.