Talking on the phone annoys me. It seems like such a waste of time. Typical evening: I get home around 6. Have supper. Somebody often calls during supper. Doesn’t matter whether I have supper at 6:00, 6:30, or 7:00. About 7:30 my girlfriend calls and while I like hearing from her I don’t want to stay on the phone for 45 minutes every day. 8:30 my dad calls while I’m watching a movie, another 20 minutes on the phone.
A lot of times I just let the machine get it. When I’m home I want to decompress and have time for myself.
It’s not that I don’t want to talk to most of these people, just keep it short & sweet people.
Me! I despise it. It’s been getting me into trouble with family and friends though. Most times when people call, I just let it go to voice mail. Then I never listen to voicemail… it’ll get up to like 20 messages before I listen. And I am terrible at calling people back. If it’s something urgent, I would prefer a short text message or e-mail. I just don’t have the patience or concentration (or interest) to talk to most people on the phone.
I wasn’t aware there were people who hate the telephone more than I do, but I may have been wrong. It is nice to know I’m not entirely alone though
For me it started many years ago when credit card companies became my best phone pals because they didn’t have a sense of humor about non payment of amounts due. Now that the amounts have all been paid, I still hate the phone. The fact that I use a phone line (of sorts) to stay connected to the internet 24/7 is truly one of life’s ironies
I curse loudly every time the phone rings. I know the chances are statistically small that it’s actually someone I want to talk to, so like nyctea scandiaca, I usually let it go to the machine.
My husband is a manager at his workplace (a prison), which seems to be staffed mostly by elementary school kids. At least two or three times a night, the phone will ring, and on the other end will be an employee desperate to get to Hubby first with their side of the story of an office conflict, or to tattle on someone, or to spread the new, exciting gossip about an in-office affair. Rarely is it an emergency, though you wouldn’t know that from the frantic messages we often get.
What really bugs me is the people who believe that calling back repeatedly and hanging up before the machine answers will impress upon us the urgency of their call.
I really can’t stand talking on the phone – no matter whether it’s my wife, my parents, a really good friend, or a telemarketer on the line, I’d really rather be doing anything else than talking on the phone. I’m usually quite loquacious in person, but my friends and family have learned that I don’t hate them just because our phone conversations last for seconds rather than minutes or hours.
I, too, think it’s great to find out that I’m not alone in my dislike of being on the phone.
I hate the phone and I don’t do personal much e-mail, IM, or any of that stuff. I usually fly into a rage when it rings and make up the first avaliable excuse to get off. I have no idea what these people with high home phone bills and 1000 minute cell plans talk about. Screw that. I would rather be dead.
A few years ago when the phone company wars were going on, an MCI rep called and said “Hi this is MCI, we would like to tell you how much you can save on your long distance bill. How many minutes of long-distance do you use a month?” I replied, “About 20”. She said “No, a month”. I replied “That is a month.” She admitted defeat and said they didn’t have anything to offer me.
My family lives 2000 miles away but they have to get on a plane if they want to speak to me. My highest long distance bill when I lived alone in college was $3.50.
Me! I’m terrible, terrible at phone conversations–I always sound really awkward and forced, and it feels like the person is always put off by the stiltedness. If I’m talking to someone I want to see their face, their reactions.
Telephones are a tool created to rapidly convey information from one person to another. They’ve outlived their usefulness in the wake of email and instant messaging.
I have no land line. I only use my cell phone when absolutely necessary, i.e. when I have information to relay to another party that cannot reasonably be reached by IM or email. Unless I’m expecting a call, I generally don’t answer my phone. The people who need to know how to reach me online, anytime.
My mother, on the other hand, has both a land line and a cell phone that ring off the hook constantly with telemarketers, relatives, and neighbors. She curses a blue streak every time the phone rings, and she’s got the ringers turned up all the way so you can hear it from any part of the house. While she’s on a call she gets snippy and annoyed, and can’t wait to wrap it up. I keep telling her the phone is there for her convenience, not the callers but she continues to act as though someone were putting a gun to her head to answer the phone.
I hate talking on the phone! I can’t think of how to keep a conversation going beyond 30 seconds, you know, after I’ve said what I called about. I really don’t call anyone to gab, I always have a reason. A question that needs an answer. I only have to deal with one person who calls me and spends upwards of 20 minutes telling me the same things we’ve discussed in every phone conversation for the last 5 years. It’s getting so I have to feign interest and after I can’t stand it anymore, I bail. I talk to my wife at home all the time, but on the phone, I go blank.
And I hate to leave messages, because I have to think of something to say on the fly. It always comes out less articulate than I am in person, and I can’t erase it and do another take. How these people who have phones clipped onto their ears can go around all day, every day talking their heads off is beyond me.
As with the rest of y’all, I have always hated the phone.
What is so astonishing to me is that what seems like most of the population of this country is walking around (and driving, alas), with a cell phone permanently screwed into their ear. What in the hell can they be talking about all the time?
I work on the phone all day. I would rather gargle glass shards than talk on it at other times. I almost never answer my home phone unless it’s something important like pizza being delivered. (we have to buzz them in) or if it’s my mom calling.
I have a cell phone but regularly forget to take it with me or forget to charge it for days on end. Which is why I’m on a prepay pay by the minute plan. I can’t stand phones!!
Agreed! I always feel awkward on the phone. If you want to talk to me, find me in person or text message me.
There are very few exceptions–I have one or two friends I can hold a full conversation with on the phone, but that’s usually if I only see them rarely or haven’t seen them in a long time. And I’d still rather be in person.
Me too! Plus, I’ve received compliments on my voice in person, but on the phone it sounds heinous.
Unless I’m in the car, where nothing else distracts me (except driving) I do alright on the phone. What does me in is when I get distracted, then I am told I sound angry on the phone. I’ve made a concerted effort to better my manners on the phone but I’m still no good at it.
I’m also horrible about even answering the phone, so it has become a cliche in my family and friends about how rare it is to have me live on the phone. As such I take pains to make my voicemail messages humorous at least. Or at least, I try to.
I wish that the phone would fall into obsolescence now that we have email and instant messaging. I use email as much as I can in lieu of phone calls, and I do as much business as possible over the internet instead of the telephone.
Unfortunately, my mom and my aunt are adamantly opposed to the internet, so if I want to talk to them I have to either use the phone or write a letter. At least in my mom’s case I can say, “I only have a question and then I have to go. How many minutes do I cook a baked potato for?” And she doesn’t fuss about the shortness of the phone call.
My dad uses email a lot but recently has been on a phone kick. I guess he thinks the phone has more of the personal touch or else he’s just taking advantage of his long commute to keep in touch with the daughters. I really dislike staying on the phone with him for an hour, but it’s really hard to get him off the phone.
Everybody has standing orders to never, ever call me at work unless it’s a dire emergency. Don’t interrupt me at work!!
I’m not much of a phone person. When it rings I usually grumble “What do you want?” at it (not the person on the other end… unless it’s my mother. And then I get in trouble. Even though I’m 27 and 3000 miles away, I still get in trouble.)
When I’m at home, I’m in cozy-cocoon mode. I’d turn the phone off if my husband wasn’t such a freak about it. When I walk out the door, I’m ready to talk to people, get sunshine, and live life. When I’m home I want to curl up and fall asleep on the husband’s lap, in my big comfy sweater. I spend most of my day out and about when it’s sunny (and half of it out when it’s rainy). I’m as social as I can be then, if kind of shy. I’m *totally * anti-social at home. Leemee 'lone, telephone.
I don’t even own a cellphone. I have no plans on owning one in the future, unless it’s to lower our already-dirt-cheap phone plan.
Same here. In addition, it doesn’t help that I am naturally a fast talker and every other sentence I say on the phone needs to be repeated about 5 times. I don’t know how I would operate without email or IM.
I loathe talking on the phone. And my husband calls me incessantly, and will keep me on the phone as long as possible. I have a few other people who call a lot, some of whom I pretty much have to talk to. Otherwise–I let it go to the voicemail that I never check. I vastly prefer e-mail over phone conversations.
Same here. I will try to get him to the point as quickly as possible, especially if I’m driving or trying to get something done.
I hate voice mail, too- I have to push so many damn buttons to get to my voice mail. It would be nice if there were voice mail like an answering machine- hit one button, and there it is.
I vastly prefer e-mail, too:
If I don’t want to deal with whatever it is Right Now, I don’t have to (in almost all cases).
It has backspace and cut-and-paste capability, giving me more chances to think about what I’m saying.
I’m a visual learner- I remember something I read much better than something I hear.
I have a lousy short-term memory- if I forget something that was said earlier in an email, I can go back and reread it. In a phone (or live) conversation, I just sound like a doofus for forgetting something said earlier in the conversation.
