Making It Up As I Go Along #314

MONDAY...
— Stay home today. Haven’t been feeling great since Friday really... and it just kept up into today. By after supper I’m starting to pick up though... so hopefully it’s done.
— Some TV, time on the phone with the folks, and internet break up a nappy day.

TUESDAY...
— Feeling better today and go to work. It goes alright there... Not much out of the ordinary. Although we’re told we’re cutting down to two teams instead of three. We once had six. And there won’t be an evening shift. This is all short term... should change again in July... but I talked with management about maybe going straight evenings as someone there to help get priority stuff through. We’ll see.
— Groceries after work and some e-mails after that.

WEDNESDAY...
— In early for a meeting. After that I work an extra hour to take off at another time... probably Friday.
— It’s official. I won’t be a second in charge on a team but I will do some team leader type duties. I’m going back to straight evenings and I’ll help out with the priority stuff when dayshift is all gone home. I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be pretty quiet with lots of alone time at work... but evening shift is more my style and the extra duties will help peak some interest.

THURSDAY...
— Work’s okay. I’m feeling a little on the edge of sickness again... like it’s gone but just waiting to come back. Blah!

FRIDAY...
— Day around the house is nice. It lasts an hour longer as I watch Laura’s police college graduation ceremony on the internet. Interesting stuff.
— Work is alright. It’s a short night... the benefit of working an extra hour Wednesday... and I’m at the team leader desk doing some new tasks.
— Got my birthday gift from sissy and family when I get home tonight. A Simple Curve on DVD... I actually can’t resist and watch it right away.

SATURDAY...
— Lazy day. A few phone calls and a ball game on TV and that’s about it. Still not feeling 100% either.


Contraption of the Damned
The telephone is a contraption of the damned!

Here’s the thing with writing... sometimes a person will write a sentence and it’ll be the first time such a sentence has ever been written. Through all eternity of written communication, something that is done millions of times a day, I would expect I’m the first to say the telephone is a contraption of the damned. But, as with talk, writing is cheap... and I doubt I’ll gain much fame for such a statement.

What I mean to say is that I am growing more and more anti-telephone. In fact, there have been times when I’ve daydreamed about getting rid of my phone. I’m not talking about replacing it with a cell phone (although such ideas have also crossed my mind). I’m talking about going completely phoneless. Could it even be done? Most things you register for, be it a club, a new job, or dealings with the bank, call for a phone number. But boy, would it be nice to try.

I probably have somewhere in the neighbourhood of two or three welcomed and pain free phone calls in the run of a month. It is rare for me to want to sit on the phone for more than three minutes. It’s got to be a call with someone I haven’t talked much with lately. Or it’s got to be a call with a purpose that needs to be discussed.

What is utterly painful to me is when I’m on the phone to someone and there is nothing to talk about... I mean nothing! A stretch is commented upon simply to break the on-air silence. And I mean you lift your non-receiver hand into the air... stretch out your muscles... and give a stretch moan as you do it. Then you go about explaining why the other person just heard that moan.

On the phone stretches should be taken as a form of saying “goodbye”. If you hear the other person give that stretch moan, say “okay, well it’s been nice talking to you” and get the hell out of there!

The ideal phone conversation, with people I see pretty regularly, is the two minute job where one of us is saying “I’m getting ready to leave, I’ll see you in twenty minutes, do you want me to bring anything.”

Hell on the phone is when you’re about to see that person within the next two hours, and you’ve got nothing earth shattering to discuss prior to the seeing, yet they decide to chit chat on the phone for the next half hour. To a point where the call ends by you saying “look, if I don’t hang up now I won’t be ready in time to see you.” Ugh!

Phone conversations with more than one other person... also usually painful. Do you ever see those news interviews where they pull in three different experts to discuss a subject? You’ve got someone in Toronto, another person in London, and a third in New York. And all three are talk over one another. They all try to answer a question at the same time. And it’s all a clutter of half communication that comes to an end before anything is actually really shared.

Well that’s the phone call between more than two people. You get people trying to say something at the same time... or conversations going off on some tangent. Like with the TV news interviews, it’s trying to shove too much into too little a period of time. I’d rather watch the one on one interview... and I’d rather have the one on one phone conversation.

Weather is the phone conversation from hell! So if you call someone up to chit chat about the weather, you are using the contraption of the damned to have the conversation from hell. It’s rather powerful stuff.

Now of course there are times when the weather can be discussed on the phone and it’s interesting. If the next door neighbour’s house washed away in a Spring flood... that’s news. If there’s a blizzard going on and you need to step out onto the front step in order to shovel the doorway free every half an hour... also news. To chat on the phone and say “well it’s sunny today.” That’s as much a goodbye as the stretching moan. There’s nothing worth talking about if that’s the comments being made.

And of course there are the telemarketing phone calls. With most telemarketing calls, a machine does the calling and there’s that delay between you answering and the real life operator getting on the line. It’s a few seconds of dead air. Well, on a daily basis, I am hanging up the telephone on that dead air.

Of course there are times when the call is made by an actual person. So every now and then you have to put up with some spiel that goes on for two minutes before you can say “no thanks.”

I used to have a real phone conversation with these people. I’d pay them the courtesy of letting them speak before I’d say my bit. Try to deal with it like they’re a real person. But over the years, and with telemarketers being too pushy, I’ve given up the niceties. It’s a simple “no, I’m not interested.” and then I just hang up. As I’m putting the phone back on the receiver, I hear the little voice on the other side trying to convince me that my money is best in their organization... and then they’re gone.

Twice already this year I’ve gotten phone calls from lawn care businesses. They want to come and give me a free estimate on my lawn care. I don’t have a lawn. There’s a communal bit of grass outside my building but I have no say on what gets done to it.

It’s a great way to stop the sales pitch right in it’s tracks though. “I don’t have a lawn.” What are they going to do? Offer a potted plant estimate instead?

I think maybe I should do that when other businesses come calling. I’ll just tell them “I don’t have any money” and that will be that. Or I could just get ridiculous. If a carpet cleaner calls... “I don’t have any floors.” A furnace cleaner “I don’t have a furnace”. A telephone company... “I don’t have a phone.”

Now that last one would really leave them thinking eh?

Or maybe “I don’t have a lawn” should be the standard. Let the jerks squirm in the uncomfortableness of my apparent insanity.

“Sir, I’d like to offer you this fine deal we’re offering today on long distance telephone savings”

“I don’t have a lawn.”

“Ummmm, I see sir.”

Then I could just start giggling in evil fashion, letting it grow with each breath I take. They’ll be bound to hang up then.

So let it be said that I hate the telephone. In truth, I hate what the telephone has become. A marketing tool and a means to kill time talking about the least interesting things possible. Yes it’s good to hear the voice of a distant loved one, but is it worth putting up with all the hardships just to hear that voice?

Maybe I’ll invest in a good CB radio instead.

“Love ya mom and dad... ten four... over and out.”