The other day I was waiting on a street corner to meet a friend. I migrated to the center of the block because I found a pleasant spot to read while I was waiting, and messaged my friend this information so that he wouldn’t be dumbfounded when he didn’t find me on said street corner. Then I got a phone call from another friend and we chatted for a second. My friend finally made it up the block and said, “I tried to call you, but it went straight to voicemail.” I said, “that’s funny, try calling me?” The call went through. Then I had an idea for an experiment: I decided to have him call me while I was on the phone. I dialed the first 800 number that came to mind, one that I memorized from my childhood, so many moons ago, the number to reach Nintendo – a phone number burned into my brain forevermore. Then my friend tried to call me. The call went straight to voicemail.

I did some research and discovered something odd. There is a setting on Windows Phone to turn off call waiting – a setting parented by a category called “network+” and under a sub-category called “call settings.” The setting isn’t the odd thing, though. The odd thing is that the setting is set to “off” by default. This seems like a weird move; most people would expect this to either be on by default, or not even be aware that this is a setting in the first place. Just a word of caution to anyone else that might make the switch.