GorillaOffTopic, Everything But Gorilla Trades

It’s happened to all of us. The dreaded cell phone call we needed to make, but didn’t want to. You know what the Gorilla is referring to. That call to your boss to tell him you didn’t make the deadline or that call to your girlfriend to tell her “it’s over.” Or how about the call to that “Chatty Kathy” you work with that has you praying for her voicemail every time you dial her?  Yes, we have all had moments where we just wanted to skip the actual conversation and just leave a message and now a new service called Slydial lets you do just that. The concept of the service is not necessarily a new one. However, unlike similar services that are limited to only others in your network, Slydial actually lets you do this with anyone at anytime in the U.S., and not just another person in your network.  Slydial is simple and easy: Users simply call 267-SlyDial and listen to a short advertisement (or you can pay 15 cents per call to skip this step) and the call is then directed straight to the person’s voicemail. And voila! The awkwardness is avoided altogether (or at least delayed). Recipients still get a notification of a voicemail or in some cases even a missed call. Gavin Macomber, Co-Founder of MobileSphere Ltd., the company behind SlyDial, says that “everybody has gone through the scenario where they’ve called somebody and just hoped they got voicemail so they didn’t have to have a conversation.”  He, like so many of us, believes that SlyDial can come in handy in the business world as well as in our personal lives, and the Gorilla agrees. Not only are conversations sometimes too time-consuming, but yes, they can be terribly awkward as well. But let’s not get too comfortable with this concept folks…after all, it’s not completely foolproof, as sometimes a half ring may actually occur, alerting the receiver that you just called! They may call you back right away, without ever listening to the voicemail you left. Oops! Backfire. God forbid you have to talk with them!   

As convenient as it may be to simply “avoid” actually conversing with others, let’s just be honest here– this behavior sounds remarkably like “cowardice” in a lot of ways! Call it what you will, but it’s an interesting service.