…Who Hates Phone Calls.

Hate is a strong word. But bear with me. I know it’s weird, or maybe it’s not. I’ve heard it both ways. Anymore I’m sure it’s not necessarily strange what with the way technology has made us more and more impersonal. Instead of ringing doorbells we text “I’m here.” Instead of phone calls…well you get the point I’m sure. But that’s not the point. My issue with phone calls dates back before this surge of technology that has mutated society. I mean…I’m only 24…so the timeline is pretty close, but anyway…I’m not getting up on any soapboxes. I’m just here to share in my weird anxiety.

I know I’m not the only one. The people in my life seem to fall in three categories (that I can think of at the moment). The ones who don’t get it and give me a hard time about it, the ones that don’t get it and don’t give me a hard time about it, and the ones that either secretly(or not) struggle with the same issue. And let me clarify, it’s not all phone calls I hate. If it’s to or from anyone I’m comfortable with, it’s really not a big deal. But strangers…oh man…making a call to strangers tightens a knot in my stomach that just waits around limp for the opportunity to tighten once more.

I think it started when I was a child (I say to my imaginary therapist) or more likely a pre-teen. I hated answering phone calls at home that weren’t for me because I didn’t want to A.] Get mistaken for my mom (as was beginning to happen) or B.] Get trapped into an awkward small talk conversation with someone who isn’t even calling to talk to me. I’ve always been a shy one. I’ve come out of my shell immensely over the years, but back then…oh man…and making phone calls? Forget about it. I could forgo eating pizza if it meant avoiding making a phone call.

Switching gears for a moment — A definition of irony is “a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.” So it would be deemed ironic that my first real job was as a weekend receptionist in a senior home (a doubly ironic job for me, but that’s not the point of this post). A receptionist. A person whose main responsibility is to answer a phone. It wasn’t a job I had or would ever apply for. It was basically handed to me during a time when finding any other job was proving fruitless. Life has a funny way of forcing you out of your comfort zone. The job was probably a blessing in disguise. If not for it, I would probably be way worse in the present day with phones than I am now.

So let’s flash forward to the present I’ve alluded to. Today had a number instances that defined where I’ve been and how far I’ve come with making calls.

At my current job, phone calls aren’t common. Occasionally the phone rings, and sometimes I have to be the one to answer it because I’m closest to it and even then I get a twinge of nerves bothering me. Why? Who knows. Years of conditioning? The phone is never for me anyway, so I just have to be the middle man for the person on the phone and the person they’re searching for, and if they’re not there it’s over quickly. But at this job, clients have prescriptions (as we all tend to at some point) and they need to be refilled. So how do they get refilled? Call it in of course. It took 8 months of working there but that duty finally fell upon me the other day. I was talked through it, and it was relatively simple but it was just one med. Today…about 8 meds needed to be called in and the lead supervisor casually said to me “Can you call them in?” She is unaware of my phone-a-phobia (<<probably not the technical term). I was in our little office and she was out of the room but in hearing range. I should probably mention that when I do muster up the courage to make calls, I need to be closed off in a room to feel remotely comfortable doing it. But I woman-ed up, stared the phone down for a few minutes and did it. Conquering my anxiety and wishing I would just get over having it to begin with!

So later…I get home from work to find a piece of mail. A new charge card for a store. I open it up and there’s a sticker that says “Call this number to confirm receipt.” It’s really quite sad the way the word “Call” whether heard or read sends a feeling of dread through me. This time it did because I recall from the first time I had to activate my card, I didn’t have the luxury of calling an automated system. No, these weirdos use….real people! So I figured I might as well get it over with, because if I don’t now I probably won’t for a while (See that? See that progress!) I lock myself up in my room and make the call. The person who answers is friendly and all and we get my card activated, but wait! This company partners with another that if subscribed to helps prevent identity fraud. You can also check your credit scores (and blah blah, been through this before) and the first month is free, and if you sign up with them the store my card is for will send me a 20 dollar gift card. Even if I don’t continue with the other company beyond the first free month I still get the card. All I would have to do is call to cancel my subscription. There’s that word again. I was ready to say “No forget it” on that fact alone. But as the representative continued on trying to sell me on it, I had a brief conversation with myself. “Self,” I said. “It’s a 20 dollar gift card…for FREE. All it costs is a phone call later.” –A phone call I don’t want to have to make– “FREE MONEY.” –But a phone call…– ……So I should be getting a gift card in the next couple weeks. Progress!

It’s just insane, and I recognize that it is. The weird anxiety that comes with calls. I’ve only shared here a minute amount of my thoughts and experiences that have to do with phone calls, but I have years worth of them. Like the time I answered a call from someone looking for my dad and thought maybe I was my mom until I said otherwise and then the caller said “Oh whew, it’s a good thing I wasn’t like ‘hey remember that time we met up at a hotel and…'” and I had NO IDEA who I was talking to. Color me disturbed. Then flash forward a few years to my first relationship and it took a couple of months of dating my boyfriend before I felt comfortable calling him (as opposed to texting). God I’ve gotten so much better over the years but still have so far to go.

It’s a little sad, but what else can we do but to accept our strange quirks and learn to either live with them or learn how to conquer them one day (or call) at a time!

 

…Who Listens.

I was a shy one in my youth…Okay, I still am to a certain extent, but I think in my shyness I developed a knack for listening to people. I care what people have to say. I offer an ear to any who need one. But what I have discovered in, let’s say, the last year or so is my growing intolerance for people who talk excessively. It’s not just that they talk excessively, but often without pause to allow the other person to talk thereby creating what some might call a “conversation.” Those people. Do you know those people? The Un-conversationalists? I’m starting to realize there’s a spectrum on which these sort of talkers belong.

There is a way to deal with these people. It’s a technique I fine tuned a few years ago working as a receptionist in a senior home. It’s an extension of the ol’ “Nod and say ‘uh huh’ or ‘yeah'” that we all have done at some point because we all have been teenagers at some point. Working at this senior home, for a while there was a particular resident. She was a little old lady and crabby as hell! She complained about everything. And who would she complain to? Well, everyone I’m sure, but it would seem her best audience was the receptionist (aka-the person trapped at the desk with no escape and no choice but to smile and nod). The thing about her was, though, she was extremely difficult to understand. She had a low, quiet voice that grumbled. But instead of saying, “Bitch, I have no clue what the hell you’re talking about” (I wanted to keep my job after all) I learned how to listen for the certain inflections in her tone of when something was a statement that I should say “Ohh” or “Yeahh” to or when it was a question that I then had to either hope needed a yes or no answer or ask her to re-explain the question. The other key was to pick up on occasional words to have some kind of idea the subject was. This worked pretty well until the day she decided to emphasize a particular phrase. So it went,”Grumblegrumblegrumble…OYSTER CRACKERS…grumblegrumble…” I was suddenly aware I had no clue what “we” were talking about anymore.

So she was an old lady. They do that, and honestly most of my examples are of people who are 50+ years of age. My dad is guilty of it. For years I would say (and still do some days) that there really is no such thing as a conversation with him. He talks…and talks…and talks..way high up there on his soapbox. So high up, apparently, that he can’t hear us lowly folk trying to speak. One particular example I recall happened in our living room. He was sitting in his chair, watching TV as usual, but he had paused and we had started to talk about something. What it was, I can’t remember now. It’s not important. But what happened was he talked…and talked…and occasionally (if I was lucky) I could interject with my own thought. But he’s the type of person (sometimes) who if you try to cut in, he just keeps talking anyway. At some point in our “conversation” I wanted to make a point. So I waited for an opening…and waited…and waited…he carried on so long that he eventually finished talking and said “Alright, well, I’m gonna keep watching my show.” I just kind of stared at him thinking “I guess I could say now what I wanted to five minutes ago……nope, it’s not even worth it at this point.” I don’t let him get away with that as much these days.

So now I bring you to the present. I now work at a different place. An agency that offers services to those with mental and physical disabilities. I work in their residential program. For legal reasons I’ll refrain from too many details on the clients, but there is one in particular that fits into the category of an Un-Conversationalist. Let’s call him Lenny. Lenny is an old grumpy man with a hearing aid…who loves to talk. At the end of many shifts I have to re-attach my ears because he has talked them off! Once more I’ve become in tune with my “nod and ‘ohh'” technique. What’s nice this time around is he’s much easier to understand (most of the time). So I just nod and “ohh” until he says (cause he usually does) “Know why?” to which I say, “Why?” and he’s answers like it’s the most obvious answer in the world. It’s entertaining…and maddening…depends on the day. I don’t try to have a conversation because I know he’s not looking for one. I’m convinced if he ever lost his voice his head would just straight up explode!

Still with me? I hope so. Because now I’m bringing it back to the female side. There are two women I work with who are their own breeds of Un-Conversationalist. The first…let’s call her Julie. She’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but she’s also on the older side and I have a feeling that’s where some of these traits come in. She’s in her 70’s versus my mid-20’s. There’s bound to be things lost in translation I suppose. When we have “conversations” I’ve found that she tries to be playful, but then just fails. The sad thing is, she only fails because she doesn’t own it. She’ll say something to be sarcastic (a language I am fluent in) so I’ll either return it or play off of it. I shit you not…95% of the time, she apologizes and explains that “she was only teasing/messing with me.” Maybe I just look oblivious or maybe I’m just a good actor…but I don’t understand how after 7 months of working together she still doesn’t get that I know when she’s messing with me.

Sometimes when we’re having non-playful conversations, she talks about something that she doesn’t understand fully and how she doesn’t understand it. So I’ll explain, but even when I’m giving her the answers or coming up with some kind of analogy to relate her problem to…she cuts me off to then re-explain what she doesn’t understand about it and why. At least that’s the best way I can describe it because it still baffles me when she does it. It makes me not even want to have conversations with her sometimes, but when there’s only the two of you working together sometimes it’s either that or let Lenny talk your ears off. Oh Julie…

Enter Maggie. The inspiration for this post. She just joined the staff at the house I work at. Or should I say re-joined, seeing as she worked there for awhile a year ago and has now returned. She is a talker. I’m going to say that again because saying it once isn’t enough. She. Is. A. Talker. I mentioned before that I’ve been working with Julie for 7 months. I’ve worked with Maggie 3 separate days. Let’s call it a total of 12 hours. I feel like I know more about her than I do about Julie…and not in the good way. She talks so much, so fast, and so much (yes I said that twice) about all the personal details I. Do. Not. Want. To. Know! Within the first ten minutes of my shift the other day I knew that she had taken a laxative-the-night-before-to-help-clean-her-out-but-it-didn’t-even-start-working-until-two-hours-before-our-shift!-So-she’d-been-running-to-the-bathroom-all-afternoon,-but-didn’t-want-to-call-in-sick-like-her-sister-suggested-because-it’s-only-her-third-day-and-she’s-not-sick-and-she-doesn’t-want-to-take-an-anti-diarrheal-because “I don’t want to plug myself up! I’m trying to clean myself out!” …..Call me crazy….but these are not the type of conversations that should be had with co-workers you JUST met, if ever! 12 hours total…and I know about her husband, her daughter, her sleeping disorder, her parents medical history, her medical history, her OCD tendencies…I didn’t know it was possible for a human being to fit so many words into a second. Time seems to slow down because she’s talking so damn fast! I don’t know why she’s choosing to be at this place of work when she could clearly make bank as an auctioneer!

The worst of it really is, though, that there’s almost no conversation involved when talking to her. I seriously hope that as time passes she mellows out some because I may just go crazy. I am a listener. I am tolerant…but I may have met my match…because as a listener and a conversationalist…I enjoy making a connection with people. I can’t do that if they won’t shut up for two second and realize I’m trying to connect with them! People like Maggie talk so much that they don’t even stop to hear they’re being heard. They’re so wrapped up in the details of their own life that they don’t stop to hear anything else.

That’s all I’ll say for now. These people are sure to appear in future posts, but these are some of the kinds of people I am not. What kind of person are you? The listener? The talker? The Un-Conversationalist? If you are…please…please stop talking. Even just for a few seconds. I realize you just want to be heard, but if you keep it up…you won’t be. You’ll know that once all you’re seeing in return are nods, and “ohhs” and “ahhs”.

If you made it this far I really hope you enjoyed reading! I try to make stuff as entertaining as possible. Leave a comment, especially if you’ve got a story of an Un-Conversationalist of your own!