Why is "Exit" the last option on voice mail?

Just went through an exercise in frustration this morning...

I'm a new employee in a software company and I have not as yet fully acclimated to the voice mail system. I never get voice mails anyway, so this is not generally a problem. But once in a while I do, then I have to wade hip deep into the morass of the voice mail system.

This happened to me this morning.

It seems that most voice mail systems I've used have the option, "If you would like to exit from the system press [Number]" at the end of the voice mail menu. I find this odd, since after deleting a message, exiting is pretty much the next thing I want to do. So I have to wait through a minute or more (and who has that these days?) of menu options until finally the calm-voiced woman speaks the exit option (...in this case, 9. Whew!).

This smells like a case where, a visual representation of a menu is converted into an audio menu, in which the listener must wait as the options are sequentially read off and you must suffer until the one you want is read ("9!").

In a visual menu, "Exit" is usually the last option, which is great! But I, as a user of the system can in a split second grasp the menu and go right to Exit. Not so with a linear audio menu.

So it made me consider a bit about audio menus and how a little Goal-Directed Design could really improve the situation and rearrange the list based on the goal of a listener (listen to a message, delete it, get out). Of course some folks probably have lots of messages and that solution may not be just right, but it seems like something a bit more sensible could be done.