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 want shit that leaves a record so when someone pulls a “I didn’t say red”, I can pull out the text or DM or whatever, and say, “So when you said red here was it that special red that’s actually blue?”
For me I hate phone calls because it’s someone demanding I drop what I’m doing to address whatever they want. Keep in mind, 99% of phone calls I get are at work form co-workers.
The number of “quick calls” that are actually quick I can count on 1 hand, and still have room for more. I have tasks to accomplish, things to do. And I’m spread so thin between all the things I do, there’s a fair chance I’m going to forget something about what you asked/told me. If it’s in text form I can review it when I loop back to it. You need me to check/validate/run something, cool. I have record of what, when, and if I completed it. Just because you have a question does not make it an emergency on my part.
As for my home phone, the only folks who ever call me are either telemarketers or scams. If a friend called I’d probably answer (if I have the time). But I think most of my friends are in the same boat, we have so much to do these days (non-recreation) that it’s just not easy to find time. A lot of my friends have side-hustles or a second job or are in class (like me) in order to stay competitive. When I was a kid, I remember my parents could unwind at the end of the day, friends would just come over to hang out. It just ain’t like that no more.
Why are people so offended over the fact there are some ppl who don’t like phone calls? 🤷♀️ who cares
It’s kinda childish, especially when you need something done now that requires details and understanding with no failure.
Edit: not to say you can’t achieve this with other forms but the idea that there aren’t millions of situations where you picking up the phone is more advantageous than a text.
Where’s the humanity in us all
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Example and my ass just got outta bed and the coffee is still drippin’…if I have any questions, I can refer to the text instead of calling your ass…I do shit late, want a call at 2am?
Clearly not. Business calls should happen during business hours only. BUT, it is also pretty clear that direct speech is the most efficient way of communication when you don’t need a written record, so calls definitely have a purpose.
In a world where async communication is effortless, demanding immediate attention is antisocial.
You’re saying that you don’t care what I’m doing at the moment. You want my full attention immediately. Even leaving a message is more of a time waste than a simple text message
- don’t call unless it’s urgent
- if you’re calling me it’s not urgent
This doesn’t apply to landlines, ofc
Its my right to be not reachable, outside of work i will take time for your matter when its fitting for me.
And im forgetful and prefer to be able read important information again.
Thats why my phone is always on mute and my voice recorder tells people my email address.
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.
Easy:
Between ages 13 and 18 if I received a phone call it was because I was in trouble, so now when I get one there is a pang of guilt and panic over whatever it is I could have possibly done
The idea of having a phone at 13 seems foreign to me. I wouldn’t have known what to use it felt r, the again smartphones weren’t around yet when I was 13.
My biggest reason for not liking calls is that I often very much struggle to actually hear what’s being said. I’ll take talking in person over a call. Text mediums also have the benefit of being able to be referred back to. Great to double check something, or to cover your ass. I’ll take a paper trail any day of the week.
That said though, in my professional life I have encountered a surprisingly huge number of people who just cannot write clearly. It baffles me. Ultimately, to each their own, and I’ll try to meet people where they’re at. But I much prefer written formats.
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.
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.
Which is why I’ll never understand people who send recordings. It’s the worst of both worlds.
People who send voice notes piss me off so much.
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.
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.
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.
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 have 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.
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.
In addition to everything else, there’s also a feedback loop of spam calls predominating. The more legit conversation moves to other methods, the more spam calls stick out. That, in turn, means even more people prefer something other than phone calls. It eventually gets to the point where 99% of calls are spam, and that whole method of communication becomes useless.
Easy, back in the day all we had was phone call for instant communication, so not much to compare to.
Also, you didn’t call a person, you called a house or place of work. This meant it was used more sparingly (need to keep the line open/share with the rest of the house) and if you were away, then that phone call couldn’t bother you. This also meant people were used to not being able to reach who they wanted to talk to, so if you felt like letting the answering machine get it, no one would think anything of it. You were either on the phone or present in the moment, not trying to talk with a number of people who don’t know each other.
Now everyone has a phone at their hip. You can call someone and if that someone sends it to voicemail, you know they did and it can become a point of drama depending on the circumstance. Now I can be in the middle of text conversations with a half dozen people across half the world and so when my phone unexpectedly rings then I wonder who is this asshole who thinks they deserve my full attention over these other folks, even though the other person has no way of knowing about those conversations. We are expected to juggle concurrent conversations and a phone call derails that.
Y’know, I’ve been thinking it’s more than that lately. Yes, all that is true, but I think the younger generations who grew up being terminally connected to everything, always having to have a phone on them, always needing to be able to be reached by people, all their business on social media etc… I think we’ve developed an unspoken respect that when we contact people we let them respond on their own terms. If you text someone you are telling them, hey, I need something but, you can read this when it’s convenient, and you can respond when and in the method that’s convenient to you. When you call someone you are saying, I need something and I need you to deal with it right now over immediate voice chat. Yes, we can say I’m busy therefore I’ll let it go to voicemail, but in this day and age of respectful texting being the norm, we often assume a call out of the blue from a known number IS something important that requires immediate attention.
This creates a generational disconnect. Like when my phone rings unexpectedly at work, it’s 95% this one colleague in his 70s who is nice enough, but it instinctively feels rude because I feel like I need to answer. From his perspective, if I just don’t answer that’s fine and that’s the etiquette he was used to, try to call and no biggie if it doesn’t connect.
Going the other way, I know someone dealing with a person in their 80s over urgent important stuff and that person just will be utterly unreachable so much of the time. For them, there’s no such thing as “urgent enough to need immediate attention” because that was just not possible for them and society developed around the norm of folks just not being available as much.
For me, calls interrupt my workflow with things that don’t need immediate attention anyway. So it draws focus away unnecessarily.
I also prefer to have a written record of things if they’re important. That way you can always refer back to it. A phone call just annoys me at best and divides my attention. So it’s in their interest as well that I can respond when I’ve got time.
Why do 98, 99 and 100 have no dots?
Because they aren’t items on the list
Then why list them?
