Call Me If You Need Me…

…but don’t need me.

I am not sure at what point I became very annoyed by the telephone. I am not sure it matters how or why it happened, because the end result right now is that I cannot stand being interrupted by telephone calls. Ever. Not at work, not at home. Even some of the calls to the most private of numbers I have, my blackberry, will sometimes be ignored.

And why is that the case? I remember a time when I would be happy to stop whatever I was doing and answer the phone. But somehow along the way the idea of a ringing phone went from a novelty to a burden. I think it has to do with the idea that no matter what I am doing at the moment I need to stop it immediately and race to answer someones call (or knock on the door, or any other type of interruption). Believe me when I tell you that preparing dinner for my children takes precedence over almost any phone call you can imagine. My general feeling on phone usage these days is that if it is important they will leave a message.

So is it sales calls that ultimately made me dread answering the phone? Possibly. And don’t think that the usage of caller ID helps to alleviate my annoyance. See, in order to use caller ID you still need to stop what you are doing and get to a phone. With my Blackberry, which is usually near me somehow, it is easy for me to quickly see who is calling. And since I usually tell people at work to call me if it is important, those are the calls I answer most frequently regardless of what I am doing at the moment. And if you are one of those people who have your number blocked from caller ID then I won’t be answering your call anytime soon. If I didn’t answer the phone knowing it could be my mother, what are the chances I am going to answer your call?

So, if it is sales calls that have made me stop wanting to answer the phone, will that be the reason I stop using Twitter anytime soon? Because I am already tired of the sales tweets that I see. (By the way, all new followers this week will see a 25% performance increase on some of their production queries). With Twitter and with email I get to decide when to respond, as opposed to being forced to respond at the very moment when someone calls you.

So, will Twitter and texting ultimately go from novelty to burden at some point? Most likely, yes. Anytime I feel as if I need to stop what I am doing because someone else has decided that something is more important for me, then I am going to most likely be annoyed. I try to be mindful of this when interrupting others, that chances are they were doing something more important at the time of my call, or when I stopped by their office. I usually try to drop an email to ask when might be a good time to call or meet. And yes, I see the irony here, but I am not certain that as many people are annoyed with phone calls and interruptions as I am.

In fact, there was a time when interruptions of all kinds were always welcome. It’s called college, and those days are past me now.

http://www.SQLskills.com/blogs/paul Paul Randal

Nobody hates telephones more than me. Sorry.
Thomas LaRock

well, i don’t have my own PBX (yet), but i do hate phones…
http://www.brentozar.com/ Brent Ozar

I feel this way about direct messages and when people @me directly to start a question, like “@brento how do I ____.” The thing that’s cool about Twitter is it’s social, not 1-1 personal. Ask your question to everybody and you’ll get a better response. /rant
Jason Sheneman

I couldn’t agree more. I run a production support group for Sun’s SeeBeyond product and can’t stand the phone anymore. Everyone has my work, home, and cell numbers and use them at every hour of the day. I never use my home phone anymore, often resorting to email for communication. Whether it’s family, friends, etc. I just cringe when my phone rings and let it roll to voicemail.
Tim Benninghoff

The thing I like about texting and Twitter right now is that I’ve categorized that communication as possessing a complete *lack* of urgency. I answer it when I answer it. (Of course, that’s usually still within a day/couple of hours at most).
Sankey

For me, I started hating phone calls when everyone acquired a cell phone. At some point, people started to believe that if you had a cell phone with you, you were obligated to call someone else who was obligated to answer simply because they have a mobile talking device as well. If you don’t answer your cell, they call your house. That’s why I’ve come to despise phones these days.
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/louis_davidson Louis Davidson

Sales text messages do make me mad, but tweets are not so bad. Only services that I sign up for can send me messages…and when they send me annoying messages…dropped.

I do agree about the phone though. I am pretty compulsive about answering the phone (hey, it *might* be something interesting, I am pretty sure it once was) and while the do not call list has done wonders for sales calls, it is still too hard to enforce. I ought to be able to press *666 and immediately report the perpetrator and put their number on the “can not call list” (which you can easily do on a cell phone.)