Voicemails

I made a bunch of calls to some friends' cell phones this morning. Each time, after hearing their voices tell me who they were and to leave a message, a nice sounding woman came on and said the following things:

1. "Please leave a message after the tone" - duh, i was just told that
   
2. "When you have finished with your message, you can hang up," - thanks
3. "Or press 1 for more options" - who ever does that?!

After my second call, I wondered: Can I skip this message? Turns out I couldn't on the next call. Then I called my own cellphone from a land line and was happy to find out that i could skip the message while I was talking.

I'm sure there's some conspiracy theories out there about why the woman comes on after the message instead of just a beep, or why you can't skip some messages but can skip others - likely to drive up the # of minutes...how much money you think the cellphone companies are making off those few seconds?

I've got to believe that after this many years of phone usage it should be pretty obvious to anyone what the BEEP means, but apparently they still feel compelled to tell us for one reason or another.

What other obvious instructions are out there which we really don't need to be re-told?