GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #897: THE FIRST RING

 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.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #371: I HATE CELL PHONES

 

Yes, yes, bring it on. I'm the old man complaining about tech. Except unlike most other old bastards, I have a 100% misanthropic reason for it. Most old bastards want to bring the world closer together. I just want to drive it further away from me.

I hate talking on the phone. Always have, always will. It sucks that I wound up getting jobs that require me to be on the phone the whole time I'm there for the past twenty years or so. It's only made my hatred of talking on phones even worse over the years. My ideal life is to never--EVER--get another phone call again. I like being inaccessible.

Imagine my horror when someone (who had the incredibly selfish motive of wanting to be in constant contact with me) forced a cell phone into my hand about twelve years ago or so. It was a Net10 burner she'd gotten off a crackhead. I did not want this gift, but it was very clear to me that saying no was not an option.

And so I joined the modern age of cell phones.

But fuck that shit. When I was a kid I tried to stay out of the house as much as possible so I couldn't risk being dragged into a phone call. Now I try to stay in areas where cell phone coverage is spotty at best, and still that motherfucker rings.

I will give cell phones one thing that is good for my well being: texts. I have no problem with texts so long as it's not a long conversation. Ask a question. Get an answer. Ask a follow up. Get another answer. Acknowledged. Done. Those are the best text interactions.

I've told you all that one day I'm going to go full hermit. I can't afford that right now. But someday.

It's funny. I was thinking about this when one of my publishers/editors/good friends, Nick Day, posted this to his own blog. I understand that he was mostly talking about being inaccessible as an author, meaning one who puts the work in front of the ego, one who does not engage in online arguments and so on. I dig that, too. I don't read reviews (more or less), and if I did come upon a bad one it doesn't bother me. If the reviewer put a lot of effort into a one star review, I find that pretty funny. The things I write are all over the place, making an author brand practically impossible, and that's by design. You will never one day hear that I trademarked my own name like Harlan Ellison. I write whatever I want to write, and sometimes that has been a detriment to getting people to read my work, but that's not my problem.

Although Nick goes a bit too far when he takes pleasure in taking his own work out of print. I'm sure that brings him joy, and that's a good thing, but I write so people can read me, even if they decide to pirate my books (which has happened, especially with Strip). I'm toying with the idea of bringing Dong of Frankenstein back into print, for example.

Wow. This is getting away from me a bit. I just meant to say that I hate cell phones, but I guess that's what happens when I write these things while high instead of drunk. I can barely hold a train of thought together.

Also I'm not a big fan of the internet, at least not in most of the ways that people use it. In particular social media. It's pretty crazy how quickly these things can become pretty little hate machines. But that's probably a story for another day. Or night. Or goodnight. Fuckers? I'm off in the weeds. WEEDS, I tell you.