Voices in the Mail : Communications: Voice mail is the latest addition to high-tech conversations, but some folks long for the days of human sounds on the line.

It was a routine day for public relations executive Alison Holt Brummelkamp. She had just returned to her office from a three-hour morning meeting about her firm’s pro-bono work on the Rebuild L.A. campaign.

But little did Holt know that while she was gone, word had reached the media and volunteers that all Rebuild L.A. inquiries were to be directed to her office.

“I dialed into my voice mail,” she recalls, “and it said, ‘Good morning. You have . . . 55 new messages.’ I screamed and hung up the phone.”

Another true tale of voice mail.

The technology that allows callers to leave messages or transfer to another extension, and allows users to pick up messages and leave personal messages for specific callers--all without an actual answering machine--has been around since about 1985. It is turning up in more and more businesses like shops, hotels and restaurants. But it hasn’t been an altogether easy debut.

Other new communications technology such as cellular phones and fax machines initially met with some resistance and controversy, but are now well-entrenched in the what-did-we-ever-do-without-them zone.

But voice mail is still in love-it-or-hate-it limbo. On the love side are people who find its versatility and programmability exquisite.

On the hate side are people confounded by weirdly cheerful robotic voices that give people too many directions to remember. These callers long for just one human voice--even a nasty one--to take their message.

Whatever the case, voice mail is changing the way we communicate, as well as business protocol. One ad exec said he’s completed business projects through voice mail messages alone, without ever speaking directly to his clients.

Others talk about voice mail abuses. Just as people flood fax machines with “junk fax,” some callers love to go on and on and on.

“I once had a 22-minute message,” says one businessman, annoyed at having to listen to the entire thing.

On the love-it side is Mitch Pera, who can spend hours telling how voice mail has changed his life. The L.A. business manager, head of Pera & Associates, signed up for his system about 10 months ago.

“I had someone working for me full time, answering phones,” he explains, “and when I decided not to do that any more I had a variety of options, including voice mail. I still have someone in my office part time, but when they’re not here, the most important thing for me was to be able to be reached. If someone needs me urgently, they can press ‘03’ and it sends the caller to my mobile phone.

“I also eliminated call waiting from my life,” Pera says. “I detested call waiting. I found it intolerable to be interrupted on an important call.”

Without his answering machine, Pera’s capacity to screen calls is gone. When a caller reaches voice mail, there is no way the recipient can overhear the caller.

But Pera doesn’t even miss that feature any more.

“I was beginning to have a problem with the concept of screening calls. Now I have a commitment to myself that if the phone rings, I’ll pick it up. Screening is a little too . . . L.A. It’s a little too omnipotent.”

Etiquette book author Letitia Baldrige isn’t enthralled. “I really hate voice mail,” she says, “so I may not be the person to speak to about this. A lot of corporations who use it don’t have a clue as to how it breaks down, how frustrating it is for the public not to be able to speak to a human being. The problem is, you have all these options, and they don’t always work and it’s terrible.”

Judith Martin, better known as etiquette expert Miss Manners, is more accommodating.

“Voice mail in itself is a good idea,” she concedes. “It is an annoyance when you have four or five options and you can’t remember the first one, but now you usually have the option of just pressing ‘0’ to get an operator.

“It’s nice to be able to have a friendly human being answer your phone,” she adds, “but it’s not always financially feasible. It’s better to have a laundress do your laundry than going to a Laundromat, too, and it’s better to have a butler answering your phone than an answering machine. But for the people who say they miss having their phones answered by a live person, how much warmth were you getting from receptionists that you really miss it?”

Has Martin succumbed to the sophistication of voice mail herself?

“No, I’m just a little lady who answers etiquette questions.”

Pacific Bell responded to baffled voice mail clients by publishing a 14-page “Tips and Etiquette” guide. Included are such suggestions as: “Maintain a professional tone by avoiding greetings like, ‘Hi, how are you?’ These are time consuming and don’t properly identify you.”

It also tells users not to “leave negative messages on voice mail. . . . It may be harsher and make a stronger impact that you intend.” And, “Don’t abuse the urgent message delivery option.”

And Pac Bell warns against hiding “behind the system. Although voice mail is convenient as an answering device, people’s first choice will be to speak with you directly. If you are available, answer your phone when it rings.”

Of course, not everyone follows those golden rules.

“I have a friend who never picks up his phone,” Pera says. “So he has the joy of not even hearing who calls. He does use it as an avoidance device.”

Stories of voice mail frustrations are legion.

When the Samuel Goldwyn Co. had its system installed about two months ago, not all the bugs had been worked out yet.

“Some of the lines were crossed,” explains Richard Bornstein, vice president of worldwide publicity. “And all the extensions had been changed, so you’d think you were leaving a message for somebody, when it was actually being left for someone else.

“Also, when you got kicked back to the voice mail operator, it would ask what extension you wanted to go to. If you didn’t know what extension, you were stuck.”

Although he’s warming up to voice mail now that the kinks are gone, Bornstein still prefers speaking live to human beings and trusts them over machines. “If you’ve spoken to someone’s assistant, at least you know the message is not in the void.”

And then there are just plain weird tales of voice mail.

One publicist couldn’t understand why voice mail would click off every time she called a certain television show. “The person told me that there are a couple of publicists that this happens to, that evidently the pitch of our voices makes voice mail cut us off.

“Yes, I did take it personally,” she says.