Phone Woes!
Most people who know me are quite familiar with my rant about how I detest voicemail. We can get into a tedious discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of using voicemail but this post is not at all about that. Its about the idea of intentionally not picking up the phone when you clearly see someone calling. I find this idea very disrespectful to the caller. It goes against the basic theory of courtesy or, for the need of a better word, consistency! If you're checking the caller id and not picking up the phone, the obvious implication is, had it been someone else calling, you would have picked up. As an analogy, if someone rang the doorbell to your house, would you just look through that viewhole thing and not open the door?
The analogy opens up a can of worms. It points toward the evolution of the mediums of communication and how humanity has developed innovative strategies of ignoring messages. The basic idea is that you can ignore any message as long as YOU think that it is not obvious to the other person that you are ignoring them.
Letters (Snail mail): They are hand written! They are personal! They have plenty of room to say everything you want to say! The lead time is HUGE! So what was relevant 3 days ago (when you wrote the letter) is not relevant anymore! AND, they got lost quite often. So we needed a more reliable instant medium!
Telephones: The accepted etiquette was to pick up a phone whenever it was ringing. Moreover in most phones those days, it was easier to answer the phone than to find the switch underneath to turn off the ringer. What if you are not at home when the phone rings. And you obviously can't return the call if you don't know who called!
Answering machines: Now people could leave "voicemails" in home phones. AND it went directly to speaker! Well maybe you were not at home and when the guy who set up your answering machine was explaining how to use it, you were thinking about what you were going to have for dessert! And of course there is limited memory in the answering machine. So the voicemail box was full!
Pagers: You have them with you all the time. You can beep someone and they have to call you back at the earliest convenience. But you can always be far away from a phone and it may be absolutely impossible for you to get to a phone!
Cell phones: They are also with you all the time and you can speak into it as soon as you answer the ringing. But incoming is not free. So it is strictly for emergency use only!
Free/Dirt cheap incoming: And the excuses continue! "I had no reception! My phone battery died! My phone was in the other room and the ringer is so feeble that I couldn't hear it!"
Because of the presence of multiple modes of communication in today's world (Instant messengers, Emails, Fixed line phones, Cell phones, Facebook, Twitter.......), there is an unwritten hierarchy of the mode of communication based on the urgency of the message that needs to be delivered. My boss once told me if I really wanted to get something done, emails don't work. I had to call and yell at them! There is also some kind of acceptable norm associated with instant messengers! Apparently it is OK to not respond to instant messages (I obviously disagree) even when it is obvious to the sender that the computer on which you are logged in is in active use! So you obviously saw the message because most messengers flash on your desktop. In my opinion it is very hard to miss it (we can reserve a discussion on whether that's true or not for later)
DISCLAIMER: This post is NOT about communication mediums! I may not be too consistent with the chronology of means of communication and I may miss several of them here.
DISCLAIMER #2: The original intent of this post was to inform everyone that I have no cell phone reception in my lab. So I won't be ABLE TO answer phone calls during the daytime on weekdays. Please leave voicemails :D
