gerryflap@feddit.nl 1 month ago
Mood. Someone has been calling me 3 times in the past days and I don’t know who. They left one accidental voice mail that didn’t help and didn’t text or anything. I’m not going to pick up the phone, guess I’ll text them if they try again.
I only accept phone calls from people I know (when other means of communication wouldn’t be practical) or when I’ve specifically agreed to call with someone unknown (like the doctor or something).
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
As much as I understand not wanting to talk on the phone, I don’t get this mindset. Why not just answer it to find out who they are and what they want so you can make a more informed decision about whether you care what they want? You can always just hang up if you decide you want to be doing something else. Or “something just came up, gotta go” and hang up. Why does it need to be such an ordeal in the first place?
InputZero@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Because 9 times out of 10 it’s a spam call and picking up marks your number as active so it gets called more often. It makes looking for a job so much worse because I have to answer almost every call. Most are spam calls but I can’t afford to miss an employer calling.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I haven’t had that experience with spam/scam calls. Mind you, I’m in Canada and the do not call list has teeth here, though that only applies to spam. But spam/scam call frequency doesn’t appear to be correlated at all with how recently I’ve answered another call.
gerryflap@feddit.nl 1 month ago
Because I find calling hugely uncomfortable if I don’t know what to expect. If the person on the other side wants something from me, they can inform me beforehand via a message so I can prepare. An unexpected call interrupts whatever I’m doing and therefore has no respect for my day. If I take the call I’ll have to refocus on whatever I was doing again which can take time and will take me energy.
Look, maybe it’s because of Autism or AD(H)D, but task switching is something that costs me a lot of energy and causes a lot of chaos. When I get a message, I can easily decide whether it’s actually worth my time, and in the case that it is urgent enough I can still usually clean up whatever I’m doing in such a way that I can easily continue. Getting a call forces my brain to drop everything on the spot (leaving behind a mess) in order to focus on the "being social " part, locks down one of my hands to hold my phone, and does not allow me to filter. Combine that with the numerous bullshit calls that I get from companies, spammers, and recruiters and you’ll hopefully understand why I absolutely hate unexpected calls from random phone numbers.
Calls can be very useful, but I’m only okay with it when it’s expected or necessary. Having a friend or family member call (or better: asking if we can call) because they need to tell me something important or need my urgent attention is the best way to do it. I don’t want a message if someone needs me right now, because I could easily read the message only 20 minutes later. Likewise, we’re obviously not going to have remote meetings via chat at work, not am I going to game with friends over text chat. But even then it’s often not oldschool calls with their horrible quality, need to hold the phone, and lack of video or screen sharing. It’s services like mumble or other VoIP services.