Thursday, February 12, 2009

PSA - Phone Conversations

I am in the mood to rant.

So here is the thing, I am not a fan of talking on the phone. I don’t hate it completely, infact sometimes it can be rather nice. But in general I am just not going to pick up the phone and talk to someone for hours on end. I very much limit the amount of time I spend on the phone. And if I am being honest, I DO screen my calls….sometimes I just don’t want to talk at all. I think it comes down to the facts that I (A.) have a short attention span on the phone and thus get easily distracted and (B.) get easily annoyed when I am on the phone.

The short attention span thing, well it doesn’t mean I am bored talking to you specifically I just get bored holding a tiny phone up to my ear and talking into that. Plus if something is on TV, or I hear a noise, or I see something shinny….I will pay attention to that because it is right infront of me and then I will semi-tune out the person on the phone. Sorry. I KNOW this is bad, but again I say that I think it comes down to the fact that I get bored on the phone. So how long do you have on the phone with me?

Well let us say L=the length of time I can be on the phone before I start fading into la la land.

L= [(Frequency of which we talk )*( The topic of conversation)^2] – the day of the week / where I am in my menstrual cycle – the last time Terry annoyed me + 6

So there you go, easy right. Use that formula to figure out the best time to reach me and when you will have the most of my attention.

You are welcome.



Besides getting easily distracted, I also get easily annoyed on the phone with people.

Here are some things that annoy me when I am talking on the phone:

1) Call Waiting. It SUCKS. I hate when I am on the phone with someone and they tell me to “hold on a minute, I have another call”. What, um I don’t think so, you are talking to ME, I called first that person can wait. I also don’t like when someone answers their phone and tells me that they are on the other line and to either call them back or ask me “what do you want, quickly…I am on the other line”. Again, I say if you were on the other line why the hell did you answer the phone in the first place. Seriously, I would have been more than happy to talk to your voicemail instead of either having to call back or to feel rushed in what I have to say.

2) Chewing while on the phone. Don’t EVER eat anything or chew gum loudly while you talk to me. I am not kidding about this, loud eating will put me in the crazy house….well I will be there anyways, this will just get me there sooner. Finish eating or spit out your gum and THEN call me. If I call you while you are eating please tell me so I can call back when you are done. This is seriously a non-negotiable point.

3) Talking to me AND talking to people in the room with you. Please don’t try to carry on conversations with other people while you are on the phone with me. This is just rude and I will most likely hang up on you until you are ready to talk just to me.

4) Speaker phone. Don’t put me on speaker phone (my parents are the ONLY exception to this rule). Speaker phone is SO distracting to me and I hate the delay.

5) Silence. If we are carrying on a nice conversation and it just flows I love that, but when we start getting to the areas of silence where we are trying to think of something to say to each other so we can “keep talking”, well I don’t like that. The minute the bouts of silence start coming, that is when you start losing me.

There was no real point to this story, unless you have ever called me and wonder why I can be a bit awkward on the phone or if you wonder why I don’t call more often. These are the reasons. Are they logical, Probably not… well except for the chewing while talking to me, that could get you hurt.

Anyone else not a fan of the phone conversations?

3 comments:

  1. There are few people that I can have a phone conversation with. They are usually the people that fall into the rare category where I can talk to them for hours in person and still love to hear what they have to say. Other than that, I'm not a fan of phone conversations. I'd rather text than talk to be honest.

    Also, I will reference your equation in the future. I squeaked a little when I saw you put math-essence into your blog.

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  2. I loved this! I feel bad because I eat sometimes when I am on the phone - sorry! I almost always ignore incoming calls though so I hope that makes up for it. If someone clicks over to take another call and is gone more than 20 seconds, I hang up. I hate that too.

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  3. Amen.

    Seriously, I couldn't have said it better. Right down to the formula for when to call...

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