There are a few reasons why I love the transcription function for voicemail on my phone.

1. It takes longer to listen to a voicemail than read the transcription. A number of years back, my younger brother informed me that leaving a voicemail was for old people, after I had, you guessed it, left him a voicemail. Rude! He said, “Just hang up, then I’ll know to call you or just leave me a text.”

2. It’s easy to see when I get a spam message and I don’t have to waste time listening (see #1). I live in an area code with a lot of Mandarin speakers and have a Chinese surname so I get a lot of spam calls in Mandarin. These voicemails come with a label that says it can’t be transcribed. Delete.

3. It’s just funny. There are some people, mostly doctors and the like, who still insist on leaving me voice messages. Well, Siri or whoever it is that’s doing the transcribing, clearly hasn’t learned my name, Vivian or Viv, because I often get transcriptions that start out, “Hello babe…” which is pretty funny when it’s your pharmacist.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a new one:

{Insert word that rhymes with witch.}
This was from a family member who is close, but maybe not that close. I laughed so hard and immediately sent a screenshot to the offender. They were mortified. But not enough to stop them from sending me this text message a couple of days later:

Bahahahahahahaha!