On the Hatred of Phones

I found myself nodding as I read both the article and your post. I really, really dislike the phone...though a lot of my reasoning relates to being a PBX operator for years and then working as a reservations agent in a small office. Most of my jobs have involved extensive phone use until very recently.

Having used the phone at work for many years, I simply didn't want to use it when I was at home. I am not one for calling anyone out of the blue to chat. I was very happy when email became an accepted way to communicate.

Initially I liked texting, but now, as with the phone, texting comes with the expectation of constant availability and immediate response. I find both to be very intrusive. Further, people rarely seem to understand that I often don't have my phone on me...or if I do, it's set to silent or vibrate. I don't, as a general rule, answer the phone unless I'm aware in advance some one is calling or texting.

I've had several employers become angry with me because I didn't respond to text or phone calls in my off time...employers, more than friends seem to be ever more insistent in employees always being available (regardless of industry) and (in my experience) even being threatening when employees are not super responsive to their intrusions.

Thank you for your post! It apparently struck a cord with me today. :-)

AMEN to that! Particularly the expectation of immediate replies, regardless of the medium. Some folks are just a waste of time and attention. One fellow emails me to "chat" and every chat is the same: he asks what's new and has nothing else to say. I'm supposed to entertain him immediately, for hours, for free. If I idle for any reason, he pokes and tele-whimpers that I'm not paying enough attention to him.

I can never even say 'hi' to some of my neighbors. They're on the phone as they're exiting their apartment, or busy texting/reading/poking at their phone. They're beyond "situationally unaware". These are the folks who get hit by cars and trains.

The Vogon Captain was right: death's too good for them!
For a good dose of schadenfreude (a wonderful word popularized by the puppet show Avenue Q), several folks were instant Darwin Award winners by dying while taking selfies. Sadly, innocent folks nearby tend to get hurt too.

A ring of hell is reserved for folks too busy on their cellphone while at the checkout/cashier. It's most common at supermarkets since the lines are always agonizing, particularly when there's any delay for an item that won't scan, or the dreaded "price lookup". But that only exacerbates the problem as they give insufficient attention to their own checkout.

Even more depressing to me is the thought that the person at the other end is doing the same. Who are these people who MUST be on the phone all day?

I was born to the TV generation and accused of short attention span. But that's nothing compared to today's kids, to whom composing a complete SENTENCE is a chore! Texting/tweeting/twitter is rewarding the attention deficient.

I have a filing cabinet of long letters to & from friends.
I was inspired by Lewis Carroll, who wrote and logged THOUSANDS of letters.
I think he said that "man is a letter writing animal" or something to that sort.
But I'm preaching to the choir.

Prepaid cell phone minutes have done much to eliminate this kind of "friend" from my life. (I'm kind of glad some of my elders never had to process the idea of prepaid minutes, though.) I just tell anyone who's used up a minute, unnecessarily, that s/he may now buy my next batch of prepaid minutes.

It's amazing how quickly and directly prepaid minutes are teaching some (painfully tactful, circuitous, emotion-sensing) people to *get to the point*. In live conversation you do need greeting words to establish attention. On the cell phone, the ringing phone does that, so no need to waste a second on greeting words. I pick up the phone, know who's calling and why, and instead of needing to do the "Hello, how are you?" routine I immediately say "On the way" or "Five more minutes." And people don't even wail about this being "abrupt" and Yankee-ish.