The Use and Misuse of the Telephone

I have commented in earlier blogs about the oddity of much conversation. Conversation is at its oddest when conducted by telephone.

The caller and the called are in a state of sensory deprivation relative to one another. Hearing is the only sense operating and that only to a limited extent; each can usually hear most of what the other says, but very little of what may be going on around him, so neither knows much more of the others circumstances that the other reveals, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

Telephone conversations are marked by a pronounced asymmetry between the participants. The caller usually calls with some set purpose, otherwise he would not have called. The called, on the other hand, unless the call is expected, is usually in the middle of doing something quite different, and may be disconcerted.

Considerate callers often ask if one is in the middle of anything important; that lessens any inconvenience, but makes the conversation even odder. Now that most of us have telephones that can be carried around the house, we could be doing almost anything when called, though I have never yet answered the phone while seated on the lavatory. Some callers show such an interest in the details of what one is doing that I prefer not to take the risk.

There is a strange convention that the caller’s interests take precedence. I may be puzzling out some aspect of the theory of relativity and just on the point of achieving some degree of enlightenment, and the caller may just be wondering if I know the name of a plant with pink scented flowers and fernlike leaves with a name beginning with ‘K‘. The sensible arrangement would be for us both to start by discussing relativity, returning later to the plant with a name beginning with ‘K’, but in such circumstances it would be almost impossible to deflect the attention of that caller from that plant.

Also odd is the treatment of any others who may be in the company of the called at the time of the call.

If someone walks up to a group of people who are in conversation, the newcomer will often join in the conversation. Not so with a phone call. The companions of the called are usually expected to fall silent, stopping in mid sentence however profound the remark they are making, and to remain silent for as long as the phone call lasts. While someone making a phone call is allowed to interrupt almost anything, it is hardly ever permitted for anyone else to interrupt a phone call. I favour a general convention that:

He who interrupts, may be interrupted in turn.

It could replace one of the ten commandments, possibly the one about your neighbour’s ass.

I’ve tried to get phone callers who interrupt a conversation to join in by using a loudspeaker phone and telling them who is present and what subject is under discussion. It has never worked; they usually seem disconcerted and to have words only for me.

Many people’s reverence for the telephone extends to protective feelings towards other people’s phones. “That’s the phone” they’ll say if my phone rings and I don’t sprint across the room to answer it. What do they think I think it is ? Burglars copulating in the bathroom ? (I have never experienced that particular disturbance by the way, though one of my acquaintance did once discover burglars so occupied in his spare bedroom.)

The irritation sometimes caused by social phone calls is involuntary and to some extent inseparable from the medium. That cannot be said for the sophistical effusions of cold calling salesmen, which must be made in full knowledge of the inconvenience likely to be caused.

One response is to have a short sales talk of ones own ready.

One fellow Go player prepared a little speech advertising the British Go Association, concluding with an invitation to the caller to join. He related that one disconcerted saleswoman for something or other replied, after a pause “Do you mean me, personally?”.

One of my projects is to try to get people to take the telephone less seriously so I sometimes answer:

“Nether regions, Beelzebub speaking”

That once elicited a request, made in an Indian accent, to be put in touch with my master.

To the ultimate in telephonic abuse, the automated call that plays a pre-recoded message, there can, unfortunately, be no immediate response apart from putting down the receiver, though I sometimes console myself by imagining cruel and unusual punishments that might be inflicted on the directors of the companies responsible.