Every time I call my little brother I get his voice mail. That's not such a big deal in itself. He's a busy New Yorker, after all. But I know I'm going to have to sit there waiting for about two minutes before I can leave my little message. First, there are the five rings before it goes to voice mail. Then there's the his slightly overlong greeting. Both of these waits I can stand. It's that last 20 seconds or so that kills me, when his voice mail system explains to me how to leave a message--as if this is 1906 and I've never used a telephone before!

"You may leave your message after the tone. When you are finished, you may hang up, or press pound for more options. To leave a callback number, press six. To page this person, press star star." And so on.

This is an excellent example of software (because of course, voicemail systems are software) with two classic design mistakes that end up frustrating and wasting the time of most (let's guess 99.9% or more) users.

Mistake one is to let the novice user drive design to the extent that it imposes on sophisticated users. Almost all novice users of something as simple as voicemail will become sophisticated users within a matter of moments. I'm talking about the part of the message that informs me that I may hang up when I'm finished leaving my message. Not to rant and rave, but is there anyone with a telephone who has never encountered an answering machine before?

The second mistake is allowing seldom-used features to impose on everyday users. Here I'm talking about the instructions about leaving a callback number or paging this person. These are two features that I've never in my life used, and I doubt most people ever have. And if I were to understand why it might be necessary for me to leave a callback number (most cellphones capture the caller's number without them having to do anyting) or page my little brother (I'm calling him on his cellphone, after all--what's a page going to do?), then in all likelihood I would already know how do perform this task and would not need the helpful voice to instruct me every single time I leave a message.

This sounds like some dude ranting about his pet peeve. Well, OK. There's some of that here. But it gets worse. I assumed that, perhaps, this annoying tag message was a "feature" that could be turned on and off somehow. I called my own cell phone recently to see if I had a similar message, and, of course, I do. So I attempted to dig into my voice mail options to see if there was a way to configure this. There is not.

Even if there were, defaulting to the idiot/advanced features message is simply inexcusable software design. Think of the millions upon millions of hours that people around the world have wasted listening to instructions on how to perform the simplest task and then more instructions on how to use features they don't care about. Even if you calculate the cost of the wasted time using minimum wage, the amount would be staggering.

Windows XP, Word, and other consumer software are rife with such time-wasting and distracting features (paper clip and tail-wagging dog, I'm talking to you!). It's a tough balancing act, I know, to satisfy the most common users without scaring off new users.

But voicemail makers of the world, you are the worst offenders. I beg of you. Stop wasting our time. We are not idiots. No one has to tell us how to hang up the danged phone.