A student-operated publication at Santa Rosa Junior College.

The Oak Leaf

A student-operated publication at Santa Rosa Junior College.

The Oak Leaf

A student-operated publication at Santa Rosa Junior College.

The Oak Leaf

Taming the telephone with Google Voice

Cell phones make our lives easier in some ways but they also bring their share of hassles. Since the advent of cell phones, it has been possible to reach people almost any time. This has led to problems of etiquette and encroachment on our personal time. On top of that is the problem of having multiple phone numbers for work, home and cell.

Etiquette presents a difficult issue to deal with. In a situation inappropriate to answer your phone, you should probably ignore it completely. However, culturally we find it hard to ignore a ringing phone. There is always the worry that we will miss an important call. Most of the time we are willing to interrupt our conversation long enough to pull the phone out to glance at the caller ID.

Another cell phone problem is setting boundaries and training the people we work with, especially our bosses. Just because they can call us at 10 p.m. does not mean we need to answer the call or that they have a right to call us. People need down time.

Multiple phone numbers can seem like a solution to the other two problems, but multiple numbers complicate things. We can give our work number to clients and our home number to groups we belong to. That saves our cell phone for friends and ordering pizza when we are 10 minutes away. Then you have to worry about a client getting your cell phone number or forgetting who can only reach you at home. Worst of all you now have three voicemails to check.

There is another way and Google has the answer. Google Voice is a service that gives you one number with features that let you control who can reach you at what times. It can be set to ring to any phone that you have access to; it can ring to your cell when you are out of the office, but the land line when you are sitting at your desk.

You control who can get in touch with you and when by setting your preferences online. For example, let’s say you are out at a party on Friday night and you meet some new people. They seem cool and interesting so you give them your phone number. Then the stalking starts. You get a call and what you see on Saturday morning is not what you saw on Friday night. You make an excuse to get off the phone and you think you are safe. Then on Sunday there are two calls and so on. If you gave them your cell phone number, you might have a lot of voice mails piling up after a while. With Google voice you just set a preference for that number to go straight to voice mail and that is that.

This filtration can solve the etiquette issue as well. By filtering down the list of people who can reach you during a meeting or while you are at dinner, not only can you reduce the number of calls you get, you also know that when the phone rings, it is important to you.

This brings me to the other advantage of Google Voice over a traditional phone number. There are many ways you can get to your voice mail. It can show up on your cell phone as a text message, it can be emailed to you or you can listen to it. No matter which way you choose to access the message, you do not have to wade through all the messages you received since you checked your messages last.

These services are all available for free via Google voice.

 

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