If you Have an Important Message for me, you Better Have a Human Calling me

One thing that I really hate doing is talking on the phone. I did that when I was dating my wife because I wanted some and it wasn't guaranteed or permanent. But even with my best friends, I do hate talking on the phone.

I have a brother with whom I DO typically enjoy talking on the phone, but that's because of the typical brevity of our conversations. Even a call on a birthday might look like this:

*ring*
Well, actually, *Vibrate*
Check name on caller ID.
"Hey."
"Hey."
"What's up?"
"Nothing. Just called to say "Happy Birthday."
"Oh, cool. Thanks."
"Ok."
"See you."
"Yup."
/hang up.

Awesome. A full conversation in less than a minute.

As a rule, I don't answer my house phone (so don't expect me to answer someone else's house phone). Sometimes I do, though, or the office phone at work, which you're more or less obliged to answer most of the time. I really despise it when I answer, and you get that little click that lets you know that you've been called by a computer, and then a computer starts telling you that they have a very important phone call for you.

If the call is so damn important, you should be making it with a person.

Or how about "Please call our office at XXX-YYY-ZZZZ as soon as possible on a very important business matter." Well, I'm not in the habit of calling strangers; who are you? What is "our office", exactly? Sometimes I think that if I call that number, I'll find that it's re-routed to a Nigerian Prince who has some issues that only I can help him with, and all that I need to do is to give him a bank routing number for which he'll pay me a million dollars in a month. If that dope needs to get money into America, all he needs to do is to contact a drug cartel...they seem to have figured it out pretty well.

Even worse is at politics time: phone rings and if you pick it up you find that it's a prerecorded message from some candidate running for the office of State Liar who desperately wants your vote. Those messages are about five minutes long and you don't have the opportunity to ask questions! You do have the opportunity to hit "delete" though. I love my delete button. Those buggers call about every evening too. ALL of them. One Liar position open, and five people running for it. Of course, those calls wouldn't be better if a human was on the other side of the phone, because then I'd have to be rude!