Why I hate talking on the phone

“No,” she replied brusquely. Then she hung up. That’s when I learned that phone calls are serious business. You never know what you’re interrupting, and if you’re going to demand immediate attention, it had better be worth it.

Soon after, dial-up internet arrived in my house and, with it, instant messaging. Who needs a human voice when you have hundreds of people at your fingertips sending you choice cuts like, “Pass this on to 5 other people or you’ll be haunted” and, “lol u seen this monkey eating a bagel?” With messaging, people could ask exactly what they wanted, and reply when they wanted – far more efficient than meandering calls.

And anyway, phone calls are for serious, important things and I had nothing meaningful to say at 13, at 18, even at 25. Eventually, I found myself with an active aversion to calls. If I had to order a takeaway, I’d go with the place offering internet booking; if I had to complain to customer services, I’d do it in writing.

But now that I work in a proper office, I can’t avoid it. People ring me all the time. Can you believe it? They just call me up – total strangers. And I have to do the same to others, too. I’ve still not figured out how to make this exchange easier. I tried apologising as soon as someone answered but people found that weird. I tried making a joke of our lack of real acquaintance by saying, “You don’t know me, but I know you” but that had an unfortunate stalker vibe. I do have one foolproof solution: call divert.

Source: theguardian