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A while back, the United Nations estimated that spam cost the world's economy $25 billion the preceding year in lost productivity and money spent protecting systems against it.

How the U.N. became a productivity expert is anyone's guess, but if it really wanted to make an impact it would tackle voice-mail greetings.

To all of you who tell us that you're either on the phone or away from your desk: Of course you are, otherwise you would've answered the phone. More likely, your phone has displayed my number and you don't want to speak with me. That's fine. Just don't waste any more of my time than you must before I have the opportunity to leave a message.

Why do people feel the need to tell us the reason they haven't picked up the phone? Having this information rarely changes things for the caller, so why offer it?

Even worse are voice-mail greetings recorded by assistants: “Hello, you've reached the office of Either-Too-Important-or-Too-Incompetent-to-Record-His-Own-Greeting. Mr. Important is either on the phone or away from his desk….” Doing something really meaningful, no doubt, like writing a memo in longhand outlining all the impressive things he does. Granted, there may be the odd duck out there who truly can't stand the sound of his own voice, but these greetings invariably are recorded by women for their male superiors — not a good reflection on the voice-mailbox holder in 21st century America.

Besides messages that state the obvious, another classic waste of callers' time in voice-mail greetings are those that identify the voice-mailbox holder's title and company: “Hi, this is BigFat Windbag, chief marketing officer at BlahBlahBlah and Company. I'm either on the phone or away from my desk…” Oh, is that who you are? Good thing you told me. I was just sitting here dialing numbers at random…

Think of the time spent day in and day out by people having to listen to greetings giving them information they didn't ask for and don't need before they can leave a message. Add up the time the mailbox holder took to record the greeting and the time it takes everyone else to listen to it, and we must be talking about billions of dollars in lost productivity.

Folks, not only do we know you're probably either on the phone or away from your desk, we probably already know your title as well. And if we don't know your title, chances are we don't care to know it. Your title is important to you, and you only. Don't record it. It wastes our time.

To be fair, some reporters — especially those at the big-boy papers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal — are the worst offenders. They get a lot of calls from public relations representatives pitching them stories that are off the mark. As a result, they record greetings like “If you're a public relations representative calling about a release you sent, please either fax your release to 555-1234 or e-mail it to TooImportantToTakeYourCall@LosingReadership.com. Also, please don't call us to ask if we are going to cover your release. If we're interested, we'll call you.”

At this point, if I'm not a PR rep, I'm thinking about ways to get around the five-day waiting period for buying a handgun. To make sure less of his or her time is wasted, the reporter has decided to waste the time of everyone who calls.

And why is it that after an interminably long voice-mail greeting, the generic phone lady has to come on the line saying “If you'd like to leave a message, press pound, or wait for the beep. To hear more options, press 1.” How about you just shut up and let the beep get here a little faster, OK lady?

Some long greetings are warranted, such as “I'll be away for the week, and won't be checking voice mail. If this is urgent, please contact…” But see the difference? This message aims to save the caller time.

For a short greeting that does the job and doesn't waste time, try this: “Hello. This is [your first name]. Please leave a message.”

There. Now was that so hard? Eight words. The U.N. should pay me for all the productivity I've just encouraged.