I had a similar conversation with mine, once upon a time.
“But what if there’s an emergency and I need to get in touch with you!”
“I live 500 miles away, mom. I couldn’t do anything for 8-10 hours anyway.”
“So?”
“So, that’s plenty of time to find a computer and email me.”
We had roughly the same conversation when she found out she was like 5th on my Emergency Alert Network card contact list.
And she still doesn’t have my phone number. I don’t even admit to owning a phone.
My phone sits on the divider between the living room and dining room, right next to the answering machine. I have a phone by the computer across the room and the caller ID box is in my bedroom.
For more than 10 years, everyone I know has known that I never answer my phone. Everything is screened through the answering machine.
Leave a message. If I’m available and want to talk to you, I will. If not, oh well.
I have a real simple philosophy about the telephone;
It is a TOOL that exists FOR MY CONVENIENCE
She knows. She doesn’t care.
I felt the same way about my job.
It was a good job in some ways (I was proud of the work) but it was dead-end with no chances for advancement. And even if there were chances for advancement, it wasn’t the kind of job I’d want to advance in. I just didn’t care.
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Overtime was a big deal in this job. We were always understaffed and the bosses were always trying to get us to do overtime. I’d just left a job with mandatory 60 hour weeks for several months out of the year and I was Fed Up With That.
They tried to pressure me or guilt me into working overtime, but I wouldn’t budge. Finally I got through to them when I said that if I were to work a lot of overtime, I’d inevitably burn out and just quit. Since understaffing was a huge issue and since I was always steady and reliable at 40 hours a week, they decided to drop the issue and “allow” me my 40 hours in peace.
Sometimes not giving a shit really does have its benefits.
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I read through the first page of this thread, and it’s pretty much nothing but people complaining about how they abhor the phone and ignore it when it rings, or deliberately turn the ringer off indefinitely. Some of you even say you don’t dial out. Why do you people even have a forking telephone?
I haven’t had a telephone since 1999. No land line, no cell phone. To date this rather conspicuous lack of this ubiquitous communication device does not seem to have adversely impaired my quality of life. Quite the contrary, in fact. For important communication, such as repair requests to my landlady or correspondence with my insurance company, I write letters. It’s better that way anyway as it leaves a paper trail of evidence. If someone wants to “just talk”, they can come over in person to my place of residence or work and do so, or write me an e-mail. I have not once in five years been bothered by a wrong number, telemarketer, debt collector, or any other of the various telephonic unpleasantries people have written about in this thread. I have furthermore felt an urgent need to use a phone only twice since moving into my current abode: both times were minor emergencies which happened on a Sunday, thus precluding direct in-person contact with anyone who could help. In these two cases, I used a pay phone down the street to contact the police and the electric works, respectively.
I can understand how a lot of people find the phone a useful device. But if you’re one of these posters here who claims they’re a curse and that you almost never use them, well, sheesh, why don’t you just get rid of the damn thing?
(For the record, I also have no television, radio, computer, or Internet connection at home, and I find that since getting rid of all these I can fit more useful work, enjoyable entertainment, and quality time with my friends and relatives into a day than I ever could before.)
Actually, I’ve almost cancelled my home phone service on several occasions (I’m another Doper who will not interrupt a dinner conversation with my SO just because a bell rings.) I have been cutting back on some services.
I occasionally work at home though, and since my job depends heavily on verbal communication (long-distance), I still need it.
Also, there is a difference between “not answering ever” and simply answering “selectively” and not being a slave to the bell/beep/buzzer.
I will answer the phone, if I am available to talk. I will not answer the phone if I am in the bath, during a meal with my SO, during sex (especially if it’s with my SO), if the phone wakes me up, or if I am otherwise engaged in an activity that deserves my undevided attention.
Sorry CatLady, that means I will not hit the pause button on the VCR interrupting the flow of my friend’s new indie film, or get up from the table while I’m eating just to say: “sorry, I can’t talk right now, I’ll call you back.” I’m pretty sure my answering machine already says something along those lines.
I dont answer my phone either much but I also hate answer machines so I dont use one because I know what it’s like for the people calling.
Other thing about answering machines - I found that people seemed to regard the message they left as an actual dialogue, as though I had answered and agreed. “So, you will be at place x at time y, then”. Um, no, that is more like leaving an order than leaving a request to phone back.
I do not own a phone for my own convenience. I own it for my own entertainment. I have no caller ID, and I answer the phone almost all the time. It’s fun! It’s like opening a present! Who could it be calling? Is it for me? An old friend I haven’t spoken to for a while? The neighbors inviting us over for beer and a movie on their fancy new huge screen TV?
Oh, sure, sometimes the present is for someone else, like my wife or daughter, but then they get to open the present!
Telemarketting calls? We really don’t get too many, but when we do I like to have fun with them. Speak with an odd accent and make them repeat themselves many times, tell them I have to ask my welfare agent if I can afford their product, come on to them, try to get them to switch their religion to whatever I feel like being that day. It amuses me.
Wrong numbers? I make that mistake sometimes also, so it doesn’t bother me much that someone else does. And if I hang up on a wrong number and the phone immediately rings again, I answer as if I were the person they were trying to call. Depending on how pleasant they were I’ll either try to have a conversation, or sob and tell them the person that they were trying to call is dead.
But no, I won’t interrupt sex or get out of the shower to answer.
I used an answering machine for years until everyone we know was trained not to even try calling us. When the machine broke, we didn’t need to replace it, since hardly anyone called anymore. Now, if the phone should happen to ring, we let it go on for five or six rings just to make sure it’s important. While it’s ringing, we pass the time by yelling to one another, “Not it!”
I quit answering the home phone years ago because it was always for my SO and it was ALWAYS his f-n father.
This man is the TOTAL reason I quit answering the phone.
He cannot simply say “hello” or “hi” or “how ya’ doing?”
No. Too simple and polite.
He will call us on his speaker phone, wait for us to pick up, then grab up his phone and greet us with a “HEY YOU GUYS!”. He’d do this so loud, I’d have to jerk the receiver away from my ear or risk becoming deaf.
One day after I’d had enough of this greeting I responded “HEY F-IN-LAW!” as loud as I could.
He didn’t get the hint. That’s when I stopped answering.
My SO sleeps all day (works a nightshift) and FIL doesn’t seem to understand that whilst SO sleeps and I’m at work NO ONE IS GOING TO ANSWER!
So his routine is this:
If SO doesn’t call back same day, it starts all over again the next day except that now he wants to know if/why we’re mad at him. :rolleyes:
One thing to keep in mind is that even if you don’t have service on your phone lines, phone companies are legally obligated to respond to 911 emergency calls on them.
Heh, I was ready to disagree when it sprung to mind how often I do this too. Either because the person ringing is going to yell at me (thinkin of you mum :rolleyes: ) or is quite likely ringing to ask me to go out of my way to do something they would never do for me.
I get free voice mail on my mobile which is ok until someone from that first group of people (thinkin of you again ma!) leaves an irate message, which makes me wonder what makes them think I’ll be so keen to answer the phone next time 
Ours says, “You’ve reached 555-1212. We can’t come to the phone, so leave a message and we’ll get back to you.”
So, the other day I come home to this message from this woman about her horse, her life in general, why she can’t come visit her horse on Friday, how busy her life is, and how she’s coming see her horse on Saturday at 3 since she is unable to come visit her horse on Friday like we’d discussed before.
Given that I’d never met this woman, or her horse, I guessed that she had called the wrong number. And I thought it would probably be a big bummer for her and the horse if she showed up at Saturday at 3:00 and the people who had her horse weren’t expecting her, so I called her back. See, luckily, she had left her phone number, which you should always do when you call somebody’s answering machine, unlike the person who left several messages, week after week, for “Craig” about how Craig needed to bring some critical-sounding things to play rehersal, and not forget them again like last week.
Anyway, I called her and explained that she’d gotten the wrong number, and since the message sounded important I thought I should let her know. She asked what number she had dialed, and I told her 555-1212 (you know, just like it sez in the out-going message), and she said, oh, it was supposed to be 555-1215.
Oh.
So you should maybe LISTEN TO THE OUT-GOING MESSAGE, seeing as we went to all the trouble of recording one, and everything, before you leave the entire story of your life and your horse on somebody’s answering machine.
“Your spouse/parent/child/friend has been killed in a car accident” – call from the hospital or the police or whatever…
“I’m feeling suicidal and need to talk to a friend”
This sort of thing is why I always answer my phone, at any hour of any day.
My call-screening has increased since my idiot eldest sister decided to treat her boyfriend (whom she aquired while still married) with more respect than her own kids, my other idiot sister is blindly defending her and my mom says she hates the situation too but won’t tell her idiot daughter that. No, I don’t want to talk to these [string of creative expletives allowed only in The Pit].
Patty
While phone companies are “legally obligated to respond,” there is still the problem with the 911 dispatcher, like my husband, being able to FIND you.
If you call from a land line, like from your home, the phone number and address automatically pop up on a screen in the dispatch center. THis is so they know where to send the fire trucks, ect, even if the caller can’t be heard or understood. States were SUPPOSSED to set up locator systems for cell phones paid for with $$$ the cell phones companies got from the users (see that 911 bit on your bill), but most of them, including Ohio, where I live, have “robbed Peter to pay Paul” so no locator system is in place. THEREFORE, when you call 911 from a cell phone, you better be ready to tell the poor dispatcher exactly where you are because all he or see will see on their screen is your cell phone number. If you’d like to learn more about this, “ABC World News Tonight with Perer Jennings” did a piece on this very topic a few months ago and might have something archived on their homepage.
Sleep tight, everyone!!!
Patty in Cleveland
For what it’s worth, when a potential customer calls me up who seems like they are an “always screener,” it raises a red flag with me. Because in my experience, they will be much more likely to duck when it comes time to pay their bill. So I’m less likely to take their case.
Once in a while a get a call from someone who flat out has no phone number. I generally will not do any business with such a person.
I mean on land lines without phone service. Even if there’s no dial tone, you can still make emergency calls on the line.