[Gllug] 10 reasons engineers hate the phone...

[Matthew J Smith]

On 10/22/2009 11:21 PM, Nix wrote:

>
> The problem with phones is that they are screaming interrupt signals
> which you have to answer *before* you know the importance of the thing
> at the other end. If someone emails you, it's easy to tell: if someone
> walks up to you and asks, you can tell after their first sentence or
> two. But the phone is like someone walking up to you and starting their
> conversation by yelling HEY! repeatedly until you respond, without
> paying the least attension to whether you're doing something else,
> talking to someone else, and so forth.
>
> The phone is simply *impolite*. It's *un-English*.

Yeah I hate it for that reason.  It's even more impolite now than it 
used to be, because it rings six times, requiring you to simply drop 
whatever you're doing and run to pick it up, and hope that the phone is 
where it normally is rather than (as cordless phones often are) hidden 
among the piles of clothes on the bed or behind a pile of books on the 
dressing cabinet, before it goes to the answering service.  Mobile 
phones are less rude in this regard, because they normally tell you 
who's calling and you can reject the call and they can leave a message 
or send you one if they like.

I almost never answer the landline phone now because 90% of the calls 
that come over it are cold calls anyway, particularly on weekdays when 
I'm usually home on my own.

Regards,

Matt Smith

-- 

http://www.blogistan.co.uk/blog/
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug