French phones

Often when you call the France Telecom service hotline (as I seem to do often for phone and internet problems), after passing through an automated menu and entering some information, you get the message, "All our counselors are assisting other customers. Please call back later." The message repeats once, and then the line goes dead.

Quite a lot of French offices don't have voice mail, and if they do, people's messages might be something like, "I'm not here right now. Please call back another time." A common secretary's response to a call is, "Mr/s X is busy right now, please call again in a little while." My doctor's phone line just disconnects if the line is busy (it usually is - I suspect he has a secretary who makes personal calls all day). No more voice messages ever again - really seems like reason enough to stay and work in France.