I talk to about 100 people a day. Sometimes more, rarely less. Yesterday I talked to nearly 160 people, today about 105. Many of those calls are outbound, and I will never, for as long as I live, understand people who pick up the phone on the first ring.
Let's pretend for a moment that I don't hate talking on the phone with the heat of a thousand suns going supernova. Even in that case, I still don't know why people answer the phone so readily. Are you that desperate for a conversation? I don't think you are. How often does someone cheerfully answer the phone only to be disappointed by me on the other line trying to sell them something? Nearly every time. There are a few people out there who love to dicker and can do that all day and even look forward to it, but they are the minority.
I have worked jobs involving tons of phone work since 2007, and even before then I hated talking on the phone. When our family got caller ID for the first time I was relieved. No longer would I have to gingerly answer the phone, not knowing who might be on the other line.
I'm getting this eerie feeling of deja vu. I may have written about this before. But I'm almost at 900 of these, and I don't feel like searching across that many columns.
I'm partially lucky because I work a job where, if I take a personal call, I get in trouble. So I ignore any and all calls I get throughout my workday. Even if I do recognize the number. If it's important enough, there will be a text, and I can read that while I work. When I'm not on the clock, I only answer calls I am expecting or that I recognize as someone important to me. The guy who had my phone number before me was a deadbeat, so I used to get calls for him all the time. That hasn't happened in a while, but I also attract a lot of attention due to my various problems and issues, so any unknown phone number to me could be scumbags, and I make it a point to not talk to scumbags on my phone. I consider scumbags people who are trying to get money out of me for any reason whatsoever to the point that they've betrayed their own people and have gone into debt collection as a way of life. But even without the scumbags I would still not answer my phone on the first ring for ANY reason whatsoever.
I get a call. I don't answer it. I look at the caller ID. By then it's on the second ring, and if it's someone I know, I will answer.
Are people lonely? Is that it? Do they not talk to anyone over the course of their day and are desperate to get a conversation in, even if it's an unpleasant sales call? Because there are some people who don't just get it on the first ring. There are people who pick up the very instant their phone rings. The. Fucking. Instant. Are they aware that there is an option to NOT answer their phone? That a phone can ring and ring and ring and then magically go to the second greatest telecom invention ever, voicemail? (The first greatest is texting. I don't like to text, either, but I'd much rather answer a text than a call.)
I don't have anxiety about talking on the phone. I'm not a very anxious person. I don't fear it. I hate it. I don't use the word "hate" lightly. I don't hate many things, but that's just the right word for talking on the phone for me.
Sorry. That's been building up for a while. It just irks me that an object that I've hated all my life is now so ubiquitous that it is easily within my reach 24/7. I wished that instead of developing cell phones to be more than just a phone, we'd just fucking killed phones and replaced them with beepers. Even that would piss me off, but it's the preferable option.
No comments:
Post a Comment