One thing that severely degrades the usefulness of the phone network is all the spam calls. It’s all I get these days. I can’t just call someone and have them pick up because nobody answers calls from unknown numbers.
It’s especially frustrating when I’m waiting for a call, like for a delivery, and have to pick up every unknown number.
ETA: Also, the immediacy of phone calls make them mainly used for emergencies. If I get a call from someone I know the first thought is “oh god what’s wrong?”
So I don’t call people because I don’t want to freak them out.
How is spam calls such a problem? Have probably had 2 cold calls the last 10 years. In norway you register on a goverment do-not-cold-call list and basically I have not gotten sales calls since.
Unfortunately I’ve heard the list is not well-enforced, so the do-not-call list functions more as a list of confirmed working numbers with humans on the other end. That’s why I’ve never tried using it…
I get probably 5 spam calls a week so if that keeps growing, I might have to give it a try…
How is having a functioning government? I hear it’s wonderful
I wouldn’t be surprised if the scammers used my country’s do-not-call list as a list of known live numbers to call. Because no one’s enforcing it and you don’t really know who’s calling with the number is spoofed.
Sadly, I live in the USA and do not have a functioning government. We can’t get health care, let alone reliable span call blocking.
“Do not call list” more like “Look at that list of numbers to call”
It’s more of a problem in different countries. Also I find there’s a blitz every now and then and I’ll get 3+ spam calls a day, and then months without any.
I get about 10-15 spam calls a day, but I do have two business lines forwarded to my personal phone too. If I do answer a call from a number I don’t know because I’m expecting a call, and it turns out to be spam I just hang up immediately.
excellent point.
I say this as an autist who used to fucking loathe talking on the phone: Its that the phone takes up too much mental energy and time, yet has a time limit on your own responses. Its hellishly stressful when you are socially incompetent, and now a lot of even non-autistic people are becoming socially incompetent.
Now its funny, I hated phone calls back when everyone liked them. Now I’m pretty OK at them because I worked at a call center for a year and now it seems like everyone now hates phone calls. I kinda recognize that the one nice thing about phone calls is there is no “set up your account before ordering your food” type bullshit. There is a consistency to phone calls.
I think I’m fairly neurotypical but I don’t like calls either (though I recognize some things are better on a call). for me it’s just that it’s feels unnatural that you’re supposed to be talking to someone just as you would normally but there’s no visual component. it’s awkward. imagine two people in the same room having a conversation but they’re looking at the wall instead of each other.
There’s also a faster sense of done-ness with a phone call: the conversation is almost always over at the end of the call, whereas with something like text it can take ages because it’s so spread out.
That… and my insecurity as to what a sane-and-polite-but-not-overdone phrasing would be fades quicker than when that phrasing has been immortalised through writing. It’s just over sooner (provided you actually manage to get through to someone)
Because I take no joy in small talk, waste of time. I type basically as fast or even faster than I talk. I can maintaine multiple conversations at once. And I can answer when I want instead of being locked up with one person that gets its way.
And I can answer when I want instead of being locked up with one person that gets its way.
Was the “its” a typo or do you think of people on the phone like objects that need to be moved aside?
Typo, but when you put it that way - yes ?
How? Asynchronous communication is better for a lot of people. And now that we have really good choices for that, it’s hard to ignore.
A phone call demands that you drop everything in that moment and pay close attention to the person on the other end. If they ramble, deviate, breathe heavily, have a lot of background noise, etc, you’re stuck with that experience for the duration. Also, recording without consent is illegal in a lot of places, so you have to be able to write things down in order to refer back to the conversation if it contains any important information.
In contrast, everything else is self-documenting, can be read through multiple times, and can be handled when there is time to focus on that task. As a bonus: most people can read and understand text faster than they can listen. So it’s just more efficient.
I absolutely detest text messaging or emails. You have a problem? Call me because I can probably solve your issue in one minute of phone call. I have been almost always been subjected to texting sessions that lasted for several hours because the dumbass on the other end lacked the spelling and vocab skills to provide an accurate written description of the problem.
Time is money and even sometimes life threatening unless the fastest method of communication is use. And fastest ain’t an email or text.
Long way to say you’re a slow reader
Think of it as a way to say you have no clue how to communicate correctly through the written word. By the time I’m forced to wade through your lack of punctuation, misspellings and the autocorrect blunders and the stupid emojis to decipher what you REALLY meant, I already have equated your IQ to be around the range of my old orange tabby cat.
If you send me a text, I will consider it of such low priority that I might get back to you in a week or so.
Perhaps you could consider that for diverse reasons people have different prefered ways of communication. You have your own prefered way for your own reasons and that’s ok. That doesn’t mean you should disrespect other people’s communication choices or them personally.
This whole statement vibrates in Boomer
Fundamentally everyone here is putting a lot of effort into defending not participating in phone calls where as if they just picked up the phone the whole thing would be over now, but instead we’re all texting eachother trying to prove our points ultimately getting nowhere.
I firmly disagree, but that’s because for me writing and reading are much easier than verbal communication.
This issue really only comes up when people like you and people like me have to communicate.
This is also why I keep a notebook at work. Without it, spoken exchanges would essentially be a lacuna in a conversation for me.
That thing about there not being a recording is precisely why emails give me mad anxiety and calls do not. Granted, you have to tell/text me to find a time that works for both. Otherwise, I’ll return the call at my convenience. Also, I hate when a task has to be on my mind for several days because there’s back and forth over email because of questions. Makes me anxious as well. Guess what I’m saying is, people have different preferences for different reasons and that’s fine. No reason to argue why you think your preference is objectively superior.
Oh wow that’s so strange. I love emails, because I can reread everything I just said before hitting send. Whereas when I’m having a verbal conversation, I’m never going to say things as clearly/accurately because I feel like I’m just riffing off of the top of my brain pan.
Which is why I’ll never understand people who send recordings. It’s the worst of both worlds.
What if I send you a link to a video message I recorded and posted on YouTube? Also it has ads on it.
People who send voice notes piss me off so much.
Oh god, a 5 minute voice note with no accompanying text, just shoot me. Like you’re really going to make me listen to you ramble on a 1x speed while you get to some point that I guarantee could fit in one or two sentences, if you took the modicum of brain power required to compose your thoughts into coherent words.
PS. I understand a lot of people love sending voice notes back and forth, and that’s totally fine if it’s the thing.
How to really be Satan: send an important video note. Make it recorded outside with a lot of wind and background noise. Then, just to be fun, slow the video down to 80% playback speed, reencode it, and send that!
This is precisely why you should never quit via a conversation with HR. You should send HR and your personal email an email detailing your resignation. Same for anything else that is sensitive. I’m fact you should keep record of everything you do for the company via email. It helps you personally because you can show how many good things you did that year. They can’t comeback and say you were Lazy if you can show an email trail showing the exact opposite. Similar in cases of sexual or racial abuse…don’t say anything to the perps…email them describing exactly what they did and cc or bcc your self and HR.
Calling is 10 times faster for 90 percent of my issues in my job. And my job is dealing with issues for 30 different people happening simultaneously. So yea, I like to cut back time when I can.
Yeah
It completely depends on this. Do you need a conversation, or do you need a response.
People don’t know how to do the one they need to do, so they hit every fastener with the hammer they got.
The paranoid narcissim in this thread in incredible. I have no idea how some people function at all if the idea of a phone call unravels them.
Not having to be available at the ready for people is great.
If you arrange for a call, through another asynchronous mechanism, then it’s fine. If you cold-call me to ask about the weather (or, more seriously, anything that could have been a text message), I’ll leave decapitated horse head in your fridge.
9999 Teams
No no, teams is number 1
Because it is only on my work computer that I shutdown when I’m done
For me it’s a few reasons:
- It demands my attention right here, right now
- I don’t know that it’s going to happen, I cannot prepare
- Usually during the call I’m forced to hold the phone, meaning I can’t look stuff up or write stuff down easily
- I fidn listening way harder than reading, and the quality of calls doesn’t help with that
I much prefer text because it give some time to delay answering until it’s convenient for me, look up answers to any questions I may have, and because I can re-read and think about stuff.
Calling is like an interrupt forcing me to drop everything there and then and immediately provide an answer, messaging is something I poll every now and then when I’m not overloaded or focused so I can actually take the time to answer.
I feel attacked on a call, i need a breath of air to process and reply to something.
On a call i feel so forced to reply faster otherwise i can notice people get annoyed. Which often leads to me saying things i didn’t want to.
Sounds like you need practice. How do you talk to people when you’re not on the phone?
Your body language can indicate you’re formulating a response, which makes people less impatient.
On a call there’s no body language so if you don’t say anything for a bit people get annoyed.
Why would a call necessarily need “an answer”?. If my parents call, it’s because they want to talk like humans do.
If someone calls because they need an answer, perhaps you should answer?
Granted, i’ve noticed that people call for the most basic things nowadays, just cause they can. That’s the real issue, not calls in and of themselves. Its a skill like most other things.
Most people call me to get some information or to push some information to me. Unless they need the answer now I want a text message of some sort, not a call. I’m okay with people like my parents calling at a predetermined moment to catch up. But most people who want to call me want to do so at a moment when a text message would be hugely preferable, so I don’t answer unless I get a reason (via text) why the call should happen now. In many cases this leads to the conversation going much more efficiently via text and allows me to actually defer it to when I have time or energy for it.
Also text leaves a record behind, so if I forget an important detail from the conversation, I just just look it up.
You are perfectly allowed to say not right now, let’s call tomorrow in the evening.
Texts are easy to forget and difficult to write.
In what way are they difficult to write?
And saying that is going to piss off a lot of folk. Nope. Best I can do is ignore the call and then send a message “can’t now, will recall”.
They objectively take longer. And honestly, nuance is lost in text. Especially if you rush it and dont use grammar, use abbreviations slang without context.
Text is good when you need to convey things that take a long time to find. In IT that means, ip-addresses, fqdn, configs etc. But if i need a yes or no answer, i wont be sending an email or even a dm. People have shit to do and they might be waiting for me/the response to get back to their own thing.
What nuance. Thanks to the time I can spend writing a message, I can commit to adding the details in readable format, and this data stays for reference. Whether it’s instruction, some info or a question.
During call, I am scrambling to answer ASAP - like a lot of folk I know, and seemingly a lot of commenters here - so you get partial, jumbled up answer.
Calls are okay when asking about preference - something you can answer from the get go - if you want some information, use message.
So exactly what i said?
With nuance, im talking of inflections from speech. Which you can’t get from text.
And saying that is going to piss off a lot of folk.
Who then might not call back at all, so it works out either way!
Texts are easy to forget and difficult to write? Disagree. Texts are easy to remember and can be viewed back at any time. Writing is a bit slower than speaking, but at least it allows you to think about what you’re saying. There’s definitely a place where speaking is preferable, but then it should be in person or via a laptop video/voice call so the quality is better and I can do other stuff.
Phone calls used to be better when they were analog land lines. The fidelity(idk if that’s the right word, but go ahead and catch my drift) was amazing.
You could hear every breath, every intonation in voice, every shift in body language. I think our subconscious works on stuff like that a lot more than anyone cares to admit. Every phone conversation you’ve had in the past 10 years has been digitally compressed.
The headsets themselves were ergonomic. Easy to use, fit the face and head alot better than the phones we use nowadays.
Basically, as soon as other reliable methods became widely adopted. No, I don’t have any phone call related anxiety or whatever, I’ll call someone if I really need to, I would just rather not. I’d much rather get a text that says, “Hey, we’re meeting up at 7pm to go out and do, XYZ, do you want to come?” than a phone call that starts with that and turns to “So anyway, did I tell you my mom blah, blah, blah… And I don’t know what to say, because I kind of want to go, but it would be a lot blah, blah, blah.”
Phone calls with friends and family have a way of spiraling off into tangents when I don’t necessarily have the time to entertain them, but don’t want to be a dick all the time telling people I don’t have time at the moment to listen to them. If there’s a self-service section to a company’s website or app, I can usually do whatever I need faster than it would take me to get through the automated menus and hold music to call and have them do it. Like my pharmacy, if I want to refill a prescription online, I log in, check a box and hit submit. Done. If I call them, I need to go through three menus to get patched through to the pharmacy, tell them what I want, hold for a moment while they help someone in the store, give them my info and wait for them to look it up, etc.
When I plan to meet up with people, I make plenty of time to talk to them and listen to whatever. When I get what I think is going to be a short phone call that devolves into tangents, I don’t necessarily have the time to entertain whether the fact that my friend’s cousin had his toe amputated due to gangrene means he should get the spot on his nipple tested for leprosy, or if he should just improve his personal hygiene and see if it washes off in the shower.
If something really is going to be a pain to communicate via text, schedule that conversation and we can have a call to discuss it, but I’m not answering phone calls whenever somebody calls out of the blue unless I’m interviewing for jobs or expecting a call about some sort of emergency.
Why do 98, 99 and 100 have no dots?
Because they aren’t items on the list
Then why list them?
to show that they are not an option :)
Combination of spam callers being more prevalent and the younger generation has unbelievably high social anxiety as a direct result of them mostly being raised indoors and alone with family.
I’m not saying that the way we older folks grew up was inherently better at all times, but it certainly forced us to converse with strangers and develop those skills.
My little twin brothers and my little sister were actually afraid to call a pizza place and order pizza when they were younger. They still don’t really do phone calls aside from work related things or direct family.
I don’t know why, but I despise phone calls. I’d even rather someone video call me or talk face to face. I just find it worse than every other method of communication.
Because we don’t have those nice thick hard plastic handles to rest on your shoulder
Or how about those pink cute kool “princess” table top phones
You could fit a whole smartphone inside one of the later ones with the buttons that would leave marks on your face
Two words for me. Read. Receipts. I have found that someone will inevitably text me and say, “why didn’t you respond?” Fucker. You texted me. Want me to actually engage with you? Call me. Otherwise you’re now at my mercy.
I prefer calling because it’s easy to silence and just let it go to VM if I am busy. Call back immediately and that’s usually a sign of being needed.
