This was a teacher that told me in the 90s. “Phone calls are an invasion. When you call someone you’re saying ‘stop everything you’re doing and talk to me’. This was specially true when Caller ID was not a thing.”
Leaving a message equals to a DM or text. The recipient can respond later, but a call, it must be at that moment. It’s synchronous.
Agreed. There are only three modern/common communications channels which are truly synchronous:
In-person communication
Phone calls
Video calls
Everything else is asynchronous, and does not necessarily involve an interruption or a disruption of your time - you can get to it when you want to, within polite reason.
And with the fragmentation of our attention due to social media - to say nothing about the broader nature of our modern culture - being able to handle communication asynchronously is becoming very important to people.
It infuriates me when I’m talking to someone, their phone rings, and they instantly take the call while I’m still talking. It’s like someone interrupting me and they instantly switch focus to the other person, like what they have to say is more important than me.
And it irritates my friends how I’ll quickly check who it is, then ignore the call while someone is talking to me. “Aren’t you gonna take that?” No, I’m listening to you right now.
I don’t have a problem with phone calls and prefer them for urgent matters, but people need to stop with the preamble and reiterations. Asking me if I have time takes as much time as just telling me what you have to say. I already know you don’t really care if I have a moment because you’ll just say what you want regardless of my answer.
This was a teacher that told me in the 90s. “Phone calls are an invasion. When you call someone you’re saying ‘stop everything you’re doing and talk to me’. This was specially true when Caller ID was not a thing.”
Leaving a message equals to a DM or text. The recipient can respond later, but a call, it must be at that moment. It’s synchronous.
Agreed. There are only three modern/common communications channels which are truly synchronous:
Everything else is asynchronous, and does not necessarily involve an interruption or a disruption of your time - you can get to it when you want to, within polite reason.
And with the fragmentation of our attention due to social media - to say nothing about the broader nature of our modern culture - being able to handle communication asynchronously is becoming very important to people.
It infuriates me when I’m talking to someone, their phone rings, and they instantly take the call while I’m still talking. It’s like someone interrupting me and they instantly switch focus to the other person, like what they have to say is more important than me.
And it irritates my friends how I’ll quickly check who it is, then ignore the call while someone is talking to me. “Aren’t you gonna take that?” No, I’m listening to you right now.
And people who use text apps for synchronous communication are holding it wrong. I shouldn’t be expected to respond immediately to a slack message.
Your not. They have false expectations and that’s their problem.
You’ve never met my wife.
I don’t have a problem with phone calls and prefer them for urgent matters, but people need to stop with the preamble and reiterations. Asking me if I have time takes as much time as just telling me what you have to say. I already know you don’t really care if I have a moment because you’ll just say what you want regardless of my answer.