"I tried to reach you but I got your voice mail."
"Didn't you get my message?"
"Why don't you ever answer your phone?"
Ah, the complaints of Phone People! I hear them all the time, including from my own family. As in, "Mom forgot her cell phone again." Sometimes it's said accusingly, as if I am deliberately trying to avoid being notified about an overflowing toilet. Or it's whispered worriedly: another sign mother has completely succumbed to Maternal Attention Deficit Disorder (MADD).*--see below
But the truth is, I'm done with phones. I hate phones. Not least because of the onset of MADD means I can't remember any new phone numbers--not a single one--not even those just recited to me by directory assistance (I'm the fool always paying the extra 30-cents for direct connection). I'm done with phones because, compared to email, blackberries, and IM, they are an archaic and time-wasting form of communication. They are the electronic equivalent of a toddler, pulling at your skirt while you are in the middle of something, saying, "mommymommymommymommyNOWmommywant mommyNOW." Whereas eCommunication is like a highly trained personal assistant, neatly arranging and prioritizing messages, giving you the choice to respond immediately ("toilet clggd!! wen r u comin home???!!") or at your leisure ("hey we were in grade 9 together, just thought I'd say hi!").
Phone People wring their hands over the supposed loss of intimacy with the ascendancy of eCommunication. Some complain there is no equivalent to hearing a beloved one's voice. Others--even ePeople like myself--feel overwhelmed by the relentless volume of their in-baskets. While I agree that too many hours can be wasted deleting spam and unearthing important messages, the bottom line is that these are hours wasted on one's own time. You can waste them at 4 in the morning. But you can't deal with this at 4 in the morning:
SCENE--MORNING: A mother sits down at her desk with a cup of coffee for a few quiet hours of work. The phone rings.
MOTHER: Hello? Hi mom. No it's fine. Just got the kids off to school. Sure, let me write that down. Gotta find a pen. [beep] Can you hold a sec? The other line is going. [click] No I don't have time to participate in a survey. [click] Sorry mom. It was a stupid solicitor. Wait, what was I doing? Oh yes, I'll get a pen. [beep] There it goes again. It may be one of the kids. Be right back! [click] Oh yes, thank you for getting back to me. It's one of our upstairs toilets. It's clogged and overflowing. It may need to be snaked. I see. Well, do you think you can get someone out today? It's pretty bad. Ok, let me know. [click] Hi Mom. Usual crisis around here. Toilet again. Okay I have a pen. Go ahead. [beep] I'm so sorry, Ma--let me get that. It could be the plumber calling back. [click] Sarah! How are you?! My goodness, we haven't spoken for so long! Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Um, Sarah-- Uh huh. Thanks for asking--everyone's great. Busy, busy! I've just got my-- Uh huh. Uh huh. Next Thursday? Let me check. Can I call you back? Oh okay. I'll look right now. Can you hold for a moment? [click] Mom? I just have to look up something quickly on my datebook. Be right back. [click] Sarah? Next Thursday is fine. Uh huh. Uh huh. Look--I've got my mother... Right. 7:30. That's perfect. Uh huh. Really? Well give him our congratulations. Uh huh. See you Thursday. [click] Mom? Okay so what 's the number again? Wait, is that the area code? [bleep] Sorry I missed that. Say it again. [bleep] Yes it's call waiting. I'm going to ignore it. Go on. [bleep] Everything but the first two digits. 5-0. Got it! All right, talk to you later. Thanks, Mom. Bye.
Mother dials voice mail.
MESSAGE: This is Janet from Exorbitant Plumbing. I was going to dispatch someone to your house, but since you're not home we'll have to reschedule it for tomorrow. Please call me back at 1-800-YOU-LOSE.
Yes, I know: A pop-up IM message can seem just as intrusive as call-waiting. But you can put on your "Away" message--and anything urgent will come by email, which you can read instantly and deal with accordingly. Meanwhile, the phone number you scribbled on a sheet of paper will get misplaced; you may forget to write down or notify your husband of the dinner plans you just made (there's no "forward" function!); your friend thinks you were dismissive about her news that her son got into his first-choice school--now she's going to be cool towards you until you figure this out; and as for the plumber, well, that's going to entail another round of calls. At least your mother understands--she's been suffering MADD for years. But your quiet morning is shattered.
Also, I don't buy the idea that email is less intimate than a phone call. Or maybe, it IS less intimate, and thus enables people to reach out to each other in ways that are less forward and intrusive. But the result is intimacy with a vaster network of friends and family than would be possible with the phone. Thanks to email, I've reconnected with many old friends and cousins I'd lost contact with; I keep up with every member of my family. We swap photos and items of interest; we have long back-and-forth email discussions about everything; planning get-togethers is much more easily accomplished with the "cc" button. Those friends and relative of mine who prefer the phone over email, or don't use email, are the one's who've become distant. And not physically distant: I'm closer to some people in Australia than I am to those who live a few blocks away.
Email and texting allows, too, for more subtle interaction than the phone. I sometimes think that eCommunicating has revived a literary culture similar to that which existed before Alexander Bell's invention, when correspondents would dash off several notes a day to each other. While eCommunicating seems less literate than those eloquent letters of yore (many messages including my own, lack even basic punctuation and rely on abbreviations such as "BTW" or "gr8"), it offers the same benefits that writing offers over speaking. You can delay replying to think something over; you choose your words more carefully; you can make gentle inquiries; you can ignore rudeness; you can tactfully raise issues or subjects you wouldn't trust yourself to do verbally--or when you can't be sure of another's reaction. There are well-known hazards to electronic immediacy, of course: all of us have sent out messages we wish we could have recalled (or didn't intend to send); and certainly there is the email equivalent of the drunken phone call. But eCommunicating's benefits so outweigh its risks and negatives, I'm almost inclined to disconnect my phone completely.
Once it's possible to order a pizza online, I probably will.
*An under-diagnosed condition affecting millions of mothers, usually in their early to mid- forties. Symptoms include a lag in response time to direct questions; forgetfulness of events, including birthday parties, violin lessons, and doctor's appointments; a heavy reliance on GPS devices even when driving to familiar locations; loss of vocabulary and name recognition (e.g. "Where did put the--the--uh--uh--you know what I mean, what's-your-face?"). There is no known cure or treatment for MADD at this time. However symptoms can be alleviated with regular massages and cruise holidays without children.
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We all need to adjust our availability etiquette (including the "mother" in the fictional mess the blogger imagined--she should have known how to extricate herself from those ill-timed phone calls). Those who expect people they know to be ALWAYS available by phone should adjust those expectations. We should be learn to evaluate how important our message or need to talk is--compared to what the recipient might be doing or dealing with--before we judge the recipient. Overall, it's about choosing the right format for the message--and about everyone honing that skill so we are not (unnecessarily) obnoxious or intrusive.
Finally we have to acknowledge that there are all types of people and many levels of comfort with various types of communication, and we should be careful not to judge too harshly the preferences of others--their reasons for doing as they do might be very different than what you're assuming. Those who LOVE to talk on the phone should be aware that for many others, it's a chore and even uncomfortable, but before email these people had no choice. Tolerance, as usual, is at the heart of it.
This blogger usefully points out that before phones, all communication was either inperson or by message. We did just fine in those days and people learned to convey much in written language. Today's written language is MUCH different than in (let's say) Victorian England, but communicating by writing--which has exploded due to email and IM--has profound value and worked well for centuries before the phone.
I prefer email myself, but some of my kith and kin simply do not respond. I have to call them to get to talk to them, and I have to admit that my own preference for the written word is in it's way cold.
I have a friend who can't write letters because of the letter writing he had to do from Vietnam, dealing with the death as a medic.
So, if I had my druthers, we'd all quit the phones, but it's like trying to hold back the tide.
One thing the phones that are glued to so many ears do is make people become like a small, provincial set of people, like an oppressive family or small town that knows or wants to know your every move. Students who used to chat on their way out of classes now hit the cell phones before they have that chance. We also do not plan, set up rendezvous as carefully because we rely on the cell phones to zero us in. Hey, it's me calling, and I'm fifteen feet from the front of the crowd. I'm wearing a, forget about it.
Somthing that endless talking and constant grazing have in common. The mouth. Using it , stimilating it , I love email. It's quieter. heh. The whole leave a VM, retrieve a VM, leave another VM , etc. is a huge waste of time. People really don't want to talk to anyone on any schedule but their own. This is another fruitful area to research. ;->)
This post did get me to thinking about my collage years. Hard to imagine, but I went through four years calling the folks two, maybe three, times a month. And, there was no way, as I went into the business world, that they would call me at work to see how I was doing. We were always in the same city and saw plenty of each other. I would suffocate growing up in today's "checking in world".
When they got on in years we talked more. I knew things had changed when I called and my Dad, who was never much of a TV man, threw me under the bus for a championship double jeopardy. But, he did call me back.
Oh, but she was expecting a call? Then why didn't "Mother" tell her mother that? "Thank you for calling, mom, but I'm expecting the plumber to call any minute. What's this about?" That "Mother" decided to keep this information close to her vest is simply rude.
And why on earth did Sarah suddenly get priority? Once again...just because there's a click doesn't mean you have to answer it. Oh, but it might be plumber? Fine...and when you find out it isn't the plumber, "Mother" should have said, "Thank you for calling, Sarah, but I'm in the middle of something. Can you call me back in about five minutes? Thanks." That she decided to abandon her own mother was rude.
The problem was not the phone. The problem was that Mother was incapable of being polite to those who were trying to reach her: "I'm sorry, but I'm expecting a call. Can I get back to you?"
Again, the phone is there for your convenience, not theirs. If they cannot reach you by phone, it simply means that you are "unavailable." That you don't understand this is not the phone's fault.
E-mail is great for allowing precise crafting of what you have to say, but using speech instead of a keyboard is much more efficient and immediate.
At a job years ago, my boss's desk was less than ten feet away from mine. I couldn't avoid seeing him during the day, so I would ask a question face to face when I had important concerns.
"Check you e-mail," he always replied. After checking my e-mail, we would have this written back and forth without ever being able to get to the heart of the matter because it took so long to wait for e-mail responses.
E-mail can be better sometimes, but it allows people for the most part to avoid direct contact with other people.
Grown ups should talk face to face on occasion.
My husband and sons are the only people who have my cell phone # (they never bother me) and I don't have an IM program any more because one day about two years ago, I just got tired of being so bloody available to everyone. Whenever I'm working with a client, I keep my business e-mail open so I'm always available but everyone else gets my recreational e-mail that I only open twice a day.
If I'm home and I feel like it, I answer the phone. Several friends have followed my lead and become much less instantly available to people but a few really resent the fact that I'm no longer willing to answer my phone every time they want to bother me.
The past two years have been nothing short of blissful. I'll never go back to being someone that everyone can reach. It's the most freeing thing I've done for myself since the day I got my drivers license!!
when i got on email initially (10+ years ago), i developed a kind of phone panic. then i got a cell phone and couldn't get off it. then i got a blackberry and went back to email. then I started my own business and realized that regular face-time with clients is very important for reasons other than pure efficiency. then i got caller ID and felt ok picking up the phone again. but then my cell phone got photo and text capabilities...
you get the picture. i became briefly enslaved to each technology until i realized that these things are supposed to work for ME, not the reverse. i find IM to be the most intrusive and refuse to ever use it, but otherwise, i enjoy all kinds of communications with all kinds of people...
Work-related calls go straight to voicemail. Friends have my e-mail address, which weeds out impulsive, blab-about-nothing calls. Anyone dying to chat shoots me an e-mail, and I phone them. I average one phone call per week. Sometimes two. Sometimes none.
I realize that not everyone has the luxury of unplugging, but I'm single, freelance from home, and have no dependents.
But this deification of "staying in touch" goes back a long way. At one time, my mother actally had the idea that it was illegal to not answer your phone when it rang.