Please Do Not Call Me
Lets face it, phone calls suck - Well, at least I think so, and here is why.
- In the days when messages could only be sent via horseback and/or carrier pigeon, the telephone was a great invention – Nowadays there are much more efficient methods of communication like instant messaging or email.
- Instant messaging and email are asynchronous tasks; the person being called gets to perform replies at selected moments and not at the whim of the caller.
- Professionals who have jobs that require long periods of uninterrupted silence (programmers, writers, philosophers, etc) find that suffering frequent and unnecessary distraction, in the form of phone calls, undermines their ability to achieve results.
- Calls tend to put the recipient on the spot, and do not allow time for deliberated answers. One ends up agreeing to things one would have otherwise not agreed to and conversations that happen on a phone are not searchable for exact wording of said promises months later in the ways that well written emails are.
- Surprise calls may be great for the caller; the person who has spent the last ten minutes thinking about the ways to discuss a particular topic, but for the person answering the call, it’s a cold-start – There is nowhere near as much time to get onto the same page and train of thought as the caller.
- For consulting professionals, calling them may seem like a way to achieve free support – Starting a conversation with “I have a quick question, I hope you don’t mind” is not a legitimate way of excusing the fact that you would like a telephonic consultation outside of regular billing situations.
- This extends to after hours calls as well; a consulting professional would typically not book a visit to see you outside of working hours, a call is made exponentially worse by its invasive nature which often demands a free consult squarely outside of traditional working hours.
- A lot of the reason why calls are awkward is because of social awkwardness, sentences that don’t come out right, frazzled mind states that don’t make much sense to the other party, and lengthy silences, all make phone calls much less efficient than a well composed text message.
- Ending calls is another challenge with some folks; there are people who cannot take the clue that the conversation is over and that everything that has needed to said has been said. There are usually several rounds of repetition at this point; see the previous points on efficiency.
- You may have free minutes, be bored or feel the need to call someone while you are passing time performing a mundane task like driving or shopping – The recipient of the call does not have this problem, they are literally doing anything else, besides waiting for the phone to ring. Even if this means that they are laying on their back, staring at the ceiling; that is what they have chosen to do at that moment, and is not to be disturbed by a caller’s urge to chat.
- By now you are getting the sense that I don’t like taking phone calls – Its not just from you (for example) that I don’t like them – Asking whether someone else can call me on your behalf to clarify something is still a phone call that one does not need to receive. This obviously extends to needing to return calls as well – There are times when I (for example) will miss your call, I have typically done this deliberately; requesting that I call you back merely places the problem of phone calls in a reverse paradigm.
- Speaking of whimsy and in the realm of “quick questions” – if the caller took the time to consider their words and type out questions in an email, there are many instances when one would be able to answer one’s own question, or resolve the reason for one’s email, oneself.