How Ringbacks are Ruining my Life

If you looked at the title of this post, you are probably like, "WTF Heather, how can a ringback ruin a life? That does not even seem possible."

Oh, but it is possible and it is happening to me, and I am going to tell you how. First let me start off by saying this is not a post about me being a music snob, because trust me, I am not. I am sure many of my friends would tell you that I have some pretty crappy taste in music. They know it, I know it, and I just do not care. I love my crappy music. Pop, Pop Punk, and Oldies rock my world. And perhaps you think I am being a tad bit self deprecating telling you about my low brow taste in music, but again I am not. Here are some examples of you can find on my Ipod: Motion City Soundtrack and Brand New (two of my favorite bands), the Backstreet Boys Greatest Hits, all ten discs of Malt-Shop Memories (I am such a sucker for Time Life informercials), Jock Jams (yeah that cd from 4th grade gym class, sometimes I like to be pumped up for the start of my day), and every single Punk Goes insert some other genre here. See I listen to some really classy stuff.... So I am not judging other people's taste in music, just the fact that they are forcing it on me.

So while I may jam to t.A.T.u's All the Things She Said while I am walking to class, I do not want to here a static-y version of Fireflies when I have to call you. One would think that ringbacks would be avoidable. I could just text or avoid calling the friends who have them, but not possible for me. I have a job where on a daily basis I am required to make phone calls to people I do not know. And about three times a week I am unfortunate enough to encounter someone with a ringback.

When this occurs, one of two things happen. One is that it is a song I really dig (this rarely happens) in which case I immediately start to jam out, the second (more common) thing that happens is that it is a song that I hate so much all I can think about is how much I hate the song. Either way, both of these situations lead to the same embarrassing result. A fucked up phone call. Normally I have become so engrossed in what is playing that I forget why I am calling in the first place.

"Hello?"

"Errr, what? I mean, Hi this is Heather..... uh from Dr. Blank's office. I was calling because uhhhh?....."

Awkward city right? Normally I am a superstar on the phone. I mean I seriously have a killer phone voice and sizable vocabulary, but the moment I hear a ring back, I regress to those awkward middle school years and act like I am calling a boy I like for the first time ever.

 Who wants to get that phone call  from the person who is in charge of scheduling their appointments and calling in their prescriptions and taking their messages? I would not trust someone who sounds that stupid and can barely form words.

But what is actually worse than that is when some asshole records a song as their answering machine. Not only do I have the same brain fart that happens when I hear a ringback, but now it is being recorded for some unsuspecting soul to listen to later at their leisure... but wait there's more....

The few times that someone has paired both a ringback and a song message, I lose my shit. The first thing I do ever single fucking time is hang up the phone as soon as the song changes. I don't know why I do it, but I can assure that I always do. Every rational part of me understands that it is just going from annoying type of ring to a message. But every time I panic about the fact that I have called the wrong number so I slam down the phone to check what I just called. And then I just have to make the call again, so two missed calls with the same number...

And the cherry on top is even after the failed call and all the prep time I have had to make this message perfect in my head, it still comes out garbled and incoherent.