Much like the rest of ‘Murica, I don’t really like having to speak on the phone. Frankly, I don’t like having to interact with other people if it can be avoided. However, there are plenty of times in which I understand that a vocal interaction is capable of being way more productive than trying to do things over text messages or emails, and I will pick up the phone and make calls when necessary.
The other day, I had two things I wanted to accomplish: contact an optometrist and make an appointment for my dad to get an eye exam and some new glasses, and set up an appointment with my pest control people because it’s that time of year in which ants decide to intrude in my home and I don’t understand why ants exist in the first place.
When the business day was effectively over, neither objective was any closer to accomplishment than the start of the day and it’s partially my fault for thinking that text correspondence was going to get the jobs done as opposed to just calling up the places I needed to speak with.
The optometrist that I had in mind, not only would they not pick up their phone during business hours, there was a message that gave a phone number that could be texted for business purposes. Hm, I thought, maybe they’d be like Delta Airlines and be more efficient at getting shit done over text than over the phone.
I was wrong. The number I was given took three hours to get back to me, and responded to me as if I were an existing patient and was referring to bloodwork, and when I corrected them, they were like oh sorry, and gave me a different number to reach out to after 1:30 when the office was back from lunch break. So I reach out to them, they don’t respond until two hours later, oddly in ALL CAPS, asking when I want to come in, and there’s no more response after I tell them the desired day in which I want to come in, and asked what information I need to give them in order to secure an appointment.
Mission failed. Need to call tomorrow.
My pest control people, I reached out to them on Friday before the start of the business day via web submission, since it was early as fuck in which I realized that my annual ant problem was happening again. No response at all, so Monday AM I call and ask what the delay is, since they’ve never taken this long to respond before, and am given a canned corn response that they’re busy and a scheduler will get in touch with me later.
Later comes, in the form of a text message, giving me a date and time that they’re available. However, I am not, because of a work conflict, do you have another time? No, we’ll just have to look for another time.
And then silence for the rest of the day. Mission failed. Need to call tomorrow. But this time remind them that I’m over having an annual ant problem and that I will be reaching out to other companies now, and the first one available will be my go-forward pest control.
The point is, yes, having to speak with other people is a massive inconvenience that I understand that we all want to avoid if we can. However, the issue is that the alternative is about as effective and efficient as trying to send an email with a cucumber or trying to construct an airplane with Fisher Price tools. People hide behind the lack of pressure from real-time correspondence to suck at their jobs way more than they already do, and the clocks of life are never pausing, and the most important commodity in life, time, is continuously being wasted.
Until people on the other ends of the lines can prove to me that text correspondence can be remotely as efficient as pursuing a forced interaction over a phone, I need to remind myself to just forego the typing and just get in the grills of people and force them to speak, because when the day is over, I want to meet my objections and be efficient with my time over the convenience of not having to interact with others.
