What's with the lady that tells you when and how to leave a voicemail?

When did we all lose the knowledge of how to leave a message after a beep?

The first home answering machine I was at my parents house some time in the 80's, and from that very day I knew what to do after the beep, leave a message. 

Along come cell phones, and of course the ability to leave voice messages after the beep. This process worked great for 10+ years, but somewhere along the line the cellular carriers thought we needed additional help, so in the past two years the added a person telling all us morons what to do after the beep. 

My message now says, "hey this is jeff leave a message and I will call you back!" 

Then SHE comes in and says, "If you would like to leave a message you can do so after the beep and if you would like to hear further options you can do so by pressing something when you are done.

Thank you mam, for making that take and extra 10 seconds.

Now, I know some people are saying, hey you can just press 1 and skip that, and you're right if you are calling a specific carrier. But each carrier has chosen a different button to press and some of them use #, which I love looking for on my motorola Q, # does not really exist. You can press 1 or something else. of course our friendly helper lady in some cases will tell you which button but only at the end of her message, right before the beep.

If I was a more cynical person, and that was a joke, I would think this was just to add more time to the persons call time. Thus raking in massive profits for the cellular companies as they add up and extra 10secs, if your lucky, to every single voice mail in the country. I receive about 4 vms a day, and I don't use my phone half as much as some people. If you don't think this adds up and is a complete scam you are crazy.

I can see it now some VP. saying in a meeting lets just add in a bunch of information before the beep and definitely tell people what to do after the beep. Then we can start offering calling plans with hundreds of minutes and not lose any money.

For god sake, Please, don't ask the helpful people at the store where you got your phone how to get rid of their precious VM helper lady. These people have been properly, or improperly, trained not to provide you with an answer. Don't get me started on cellular stores.