Advocacte What?
By Jan Sherrell
Advocate has not been a word I use in my general language. My girlfriends at Bunco don’t discuss advocacy and the best way to do it. My twenty-something kids don’t bring up advocacy at the dinner table (right, like I can get them to the dinner table).
The strongest sense of advocacy I’ve had is in health care. It has become obvious to me that when someone has a health issue and is working the maze of healthcare providers, insurance and medicine they need a strong advocate behind them. Someone to make sure every symptom and treatment is expressed and received clearly. That when something doesn’t sound right – the patient has an advocate to support or pursue their misgiving.
I heard on the radio another instance where I would be willing to advocate. They were discussing a petition started to let the cell phone carriers know that we have a problem with their service. The petition is because of that stupid 15 second message you have to listen to every time a cell phone is not answered and you are waiting to leave a message. You’ve already heard the cell phone owner’s recorded, “Please leave me a message” recording. Followed by: “At the tone please record your message. After leaving the message you can press one or hang up. To leave a call back number press 5.”
REALLY, like we need to be told how to leave a voice mail? REALLY?
This is one of life’s annoyances we just grudgingly accept. But someone has decided we shouldn’t have to lose 15 seconds of our life for each message and 15 seconds of our cell phone time. They’ve started a petition and 2 providers have responded with “we’re looking into it.” Which translated means – depends on how loud and grouchy these advocates get.
It would be really effective if I could provide you with the link to the petition. Um, I didn’t write that down. It was a comedian on Bob and Tom radio show. So maybe you can find that link and share it with the rest of us? And we all get loud and grouchy about losing 15 seconds per voice mail.
The next time you hear Metro United Way talk about advocacy – you’ll realize anyone can do it and when enough of us advocate around something we have a better chance of being heard.
That actually wasn’t a comedian per se. It was New York Times tech columnist David Pogue via telephone talking about his “Take Back the Beep” Campaign. And I’m not sure that there’s actually a petition. It’s more of a call-to-action for cell phone users to complain to their carriers.
Here’s a link for more info:
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/the-mandatory-15-second-voicemail-instructions/