Phone manners

I don't know whether this follows on from my last blog post or not, but something that has been vexing me lately is the abject lack of manners some people display on the phone these days!

More than once recently, my phone has rung and when I've answered it, I've been greeted with, "Hello. Who's this?"

No no, good sir! You rang me! If you're anyone I care to talk to, you already have an idea to whom you're speaking, or at least with whom you wish to be speaking. I don't like being assaulted by a cold caller acting like the Spanish Inquisition.

I've also been rung up and asked a series of personal questions with not so much as a how do you do!

After picking up the phone, I get "Hello. Can I ask how much you pay on your phone bill each month?"
You can ask, madame, but I'm not telling you?
She then had the cheek to ask why I wouldn't tell her how much I spend on my phone bill! When I explained it's because I had no idea who she was or why she wanted to know, she ventured that she was Carla and asked again, how much I spend on my phone.

And hacking me off the most at the moment, is when you ring up to make a mundane enquiry of an organisation. For example, ringing up your mobile service provider to find out when you're due an upgrade. Something similar to the following has happened to me three times in the last week.

I ring up and after navigating their 'helpful' automated phone system (which in the first instance spent about 5 minutes getting me to make simple choices and press numbers finished by telling me that the number had changed and I now needed to ring another number... that took me down the same series of options), I get through to a real person.
"Hello," he says "My name is Stuart. How can I help you?"
"Hi. I just called to check the status of my Direct Debit to Tesco."
"The one last paid on the 21st of November?" Stuart enquires.
"Yes," I reply.

Then... nothing. Not a sound. The line goes silent. I hold off on asking if he's still there for fear of sounding needy. He only introduced himself seconds ago and I don't want him to feel that I've based much of my future happiness on him. I strain to listen for breathing, keytaps, the sound of hurried footsteps and a door shutting, but nothing! I leave it a little longer but still nothing. I have no idea how long checking that would take, if that's what Stuart's gone to do. Surely not this long? Maybe it does take a while. I'll leave it a little longer. Maybe he's talking to me right now and I've just gone deaf and he thinks I'm being awfully rude by not answering, but a quick rap of my knuckles on the desk disproves that one.
Eventually, the fear that I'm actually sat holding a disconnected phone to my ear and how ridiculous I'll feel if I wait this way for much longer overcomes me.
"Erm... hello?" I say tentatively. "Are you still there?"
"Yeah," comes the reply. "I'm just checking that for you."

Then bloody well say that's what you're going to do before you become a mute midway through a conversation, Stuart!! If I can't see you checking on that for me, and I can't hear you, the line could have been disconnected, one of us may have accidentally pressed the mute button with our cheeks, or you may have had an unexpected coronary and died midway through our conversation and I worry, Stuart! I worry. But you don't care!

All it takes is, "Give me a moment to check that," and I'm happy! I know that while you may have gone silent during an audio only interaction, the reason is that you're preoccupied fulfilling my request. Surely basic manners say that when somebody makes a request of you, you don't just blank them and make no acknowledgement of it?!

I might try that with next cold-caller though.

In a world of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Texts... what becomes of friendships?

Something that occupies my thoughts these days is our reliance on technology and a worry that it is creating, in some respects, a socially inept and bankrupt society.

For example, it is easy for someone to socialise online now via texts and IMs emails, Facebook and so on. You can consider yourself very well informed on the well-being of your friends having not seen or even actually spoken to them in months. I worry that people growing up used to this level of electronic socialising may be relying on them and not developing adequate real-life social skills, even preferring electronic socialising as it is easier, broader, and yet also appeals to any innate egotism we may have.
I worry we're losing the respect for the wisdom of our elders. Now, when we move out of home and we wonder how to cook that joint, or sort that leaky tap, or what to do about that patch of dry skin, or check that thing on the car, what to do with our baby when it does that thing, or who that President was, we don't need to ask our mum and dad, our grandparents, or other members of our community... when we can Google it.

In a day we can wake up, catch up with the news of our nearest and dearest on Facebook, the news of the wider world on telly and websites, work from home on the computer and web, shop from home at our computer or phone, research trivia and skills from home, learn how to cook on our own. When we worry that we are not socialising correctly, we can check our online help groups and forums for reassurance that we are actually ok and that this is how things simply are in the modern age.

If this is all too much in real life, we have entire games with their own politics, infrastructures, and communities where we can do all of this stuff virtually.

We all know it's actually not that uncommon in a room full of friends who have met up to socialise with each other, to see that they are all on their phones, often socialising virtually with others.I did a full day of workshops at a Halloween Holiday summer club a few weeks ago. The kids there were about 11 or 12 I think. At lunch time, they were mostly sitting on the sofas with their phones in their hands. It made me sad. The teachers made a point of making them go outside and organising some ball games to play. To me, it seems odd that a group of kids who all know each other would need to be made, after several hours indoors, to go outside and play.

I also worry that I'm now becoming officially old and more specifically, a stick-in-the-mud. Maybe I just need to accept that I am indeed now an elder, and accept that this is kids today, and just get on with being part of the grand old tradition of elders not approving of "kids today".

Don't get me wrong, I'm no technophobe... I think technology is great and is exciting and has a great many useful and amazing applications - both vital and less vital. Even the completely frivolous and extravagant ideas. The idea of being able to walk round your house and have pictures, climate, music etc change at the press of a button or less is amazing. A fridge that detects when you're at the supermarket and sends you a text telling you your butter's out of date... marvellous! A phone that detects in a crowded park that a bench has just become free... hmmm not so sure but you get my point.

I just worry for the social implications it has.

And based on no solid evidence but what I have noticed and my own prejudices, I am largely referring to the effect on younger people. I feel posited on a vantage point I'm sure will resonate with many my age. That is, I remember a time when having a mobile phone wasn't normal. When it wasn't expected. I remember even more clearly a time when phones simply weren't capable of connecting us to so many services. You rung people on them. Later you texted people on them too. I remember a time when the internet was a luxury. I remember the magic and utter bafflement when school was connected to the internet. I remember a time when, if I wanted to use the internet for my homework, I had to book a computer at the library. I am old enough to remember this.

I am also young enough to take the fact that I can order, pay for, and listen to a news report made minutes ago with a couple of taps on a screen for granted. I was young as this technology became popular - I am used to it and would feel weird without it.
People a few years younger than me do not know a world where it's almost inconceivable to not have a mobile phone and Broadband at home. Of course technology moves on and what was once exciting and new is soon taken for granted. In this country, a flushing toilet was once never heard of, then a luxury, and now a commodity you don't even imagine not having in your home.

Maybe 'worry' is too strong a word for what I'm doing. It doesn't keep me up at night. I suppose what I'm doing is wondering and hoping the answer isn't bad.

I wonder what effect taking for granted such round-the-clock connectedness to everything will have on people. I wonder if being socially inept face-to-face may soon not be considered a deficiency, as face-to-face interaction is actually far less common-place and much less necessary.

There are too many humans on the planet to exist and maintain infrastructures without the technology to which I'm referring, and this is natural progression. But now, for the first time, we have the theoretical capability to interact with a lot of them from out bedrooms. We don't however, have the capacity to form meaningful relationships with all of those. Our brains just do not have the capacity to store and update information about that number of people on a meaningful and personal level. This, it seems to me, could push people to try to become their own mini-celebrity. They centre social media around themselves and instead of forming deeper relationships with fewer people, they are forming more superficial relationships with a larger number of people.
With increased amounts of time spent doing this, and the simple fact that you will continue interacting on some level with long past the point where without the tech you would have ceased doing so could lead to people stretching themselves thinly.
I'm extrapolating here (quite possibly bombastically) but also, instead of talking about themselves, opening up, and discussing things, people get used to 'updating' about themselves, closing off, and maintaining a publically acceptable persona. They get used to interacting very superficially. The way people interact online spills over into face to face interactions. Sure, technology has always shaped the way we interact and this may be the next step (or it may not be) and the old guard always regard these changes with suspicion. I find this topic fascinating and exciting and fun but I also find myself hoping I like however it will turn out regardless of my musings.

This has been a particularly long ramble, even for me.