My coworker spent 30 minutes trying to find another way to contact a vendor after I told her the easiest way to order the thing she needed was just to call and it would take 2 minutes. I hate calling too, but that's just dumb. Or maybe I just like efficiency more than I hate the phone.
At work at least I have a script I can follow. I am The Role.
But please don't make me order a pizza after work hours
I mean, if there's a fully functional way to order online, why would you call? I just prefer a phone call when something would take paragraphs to explain or if there really isn't an easy way to do something via a website/email.
Tbh I call because
"Pick up or delivery?"
"Pick up."
"Name?
"[Name Redacted]"
"Alright and what can I get ya?"
"16" pepperoni, jalapeno, pineapple, that's it."
"Alright 20min"
Is like a 1min conversation, and I'd rather do that than get charged $5 more for using online.
Some of the online ordering services are sneaky and bake their fee into the prices of the items you order, so it's not even clear that you pay extra. My despise of that practice motivates me to call in my orders.
Or maybe I just like efficiency more than I hate the phone.
This is me. Texting is great for simple questions but if any sort of extended back and forth is needed just calling tends to be faster.
It’s not so much that I can’t make phone calls, as much as I don’t want to. 75% of the time you just end up playing phone tag, and I’d rather just email so they can reply at their convenience and there’s no question about who said what
Along with the fact that any more when you HAVE to call, it's going to be dealing with a bullshit auto answering system that leads you in circles and intentionally misunderstands you.
This is the problem.
I needed a car battery the other day and just wanted to know if it was in stock because it's a little uncommon. I went online, it said they did, went to the store, they didn't, told me to call and verify because online updates overnight.
I called 4 different stores, nobody answered the first 3, 4th one rang forever, then an auto answering thing kept me for 5 minutes and when no option helped me it said "try again later, goodbye."
I'm a millennial. I'm nearly 41. I'm the director of department.
I am also a fun little trash goblin on the weekends.
We can be competent at work and fun friendly people.
I find all this generational ontology very tiring nowadays
Always has been, stupid way to needlessly divide people
Literally everything I learned in my high school careers class was useless because the world changed so much because of the internet getting more and more mainstream. Was told to keep calling and asking about applications; nobody actually answers the phone. Was told to collect and fill out applications in person; everyone moved to online-only applications. Was told to dress like I'm going to church for interviews; most interviews I've had were group interviews and 90% of the other applicants just wore jeans and t-shirts. Was taught to meet the higher ups so they would get to know me; the higher ups aren't even on site except maybe once in a blue moon because something went wrong.
Make something go wrong, then
Have you seen what they’re leaving us? No thanks.
When presented with a mad max waste land, would you prefer to be on a pole, or driving?
I'm a warboy at heart but I'm getting older and management in gas town is more stable and has better benefits.
I'm a millennial and I'm fine at work with eye contact and whatnot (it's uncomfortable, but I'm a manager now and do it regularly), but I detest phone calls. I don't understand why, I'm fine going in to an institution to get stuff done, but the thought of calling someone is super intimidating for some reason. And I grew up with a landline at home and didn't get a cell phone (i.e. no SMS) until I went to college. So it's not like I was conditioned to avoid calls, I just grew to hate them for some reason.
That said, when I do call, I generally get things done much more quickly, so it's completely irrational. Yet here we are. I have to give myself a small pep talk before pressing the call button.
Do you feel like it's hard to understand people who are talking clearly when you're on the phone? I do.
I take 30-40 calls daily, before this job I would never call, now I feel very comfortable calling, but I will still never ever answer an unknown call outside of work.
Chiming to say I am also a millennial that doesn't break down over phone calls, shaking hands, and talking to strangers, even when the socialization is important to my livelihood
I don't break down while interacting, but I certainly break down when I get home. Yay masking.
We already do now if they learn the dark art of not giving random people their entire lifesavings to a Nigerian prince via text....
We had a new Engineer start, fresh out of college, and he was terrified to call people at first. Now, only a few months later, he much prefers it as a more effective means of communicating.
The youngest millennials are turning 30, what you have there is a gen Z engineer.
So an Engen-Z-er?
I'll show myself out
I had a job where I made 20+ calls per day. I worked there for almost 2 years, and hated it just as much the day i quit as the day i started. They weren't even particularly difficult calls, just processing orders and looking up part numbers.
That being said now I sit in zoom meetings which don't seem that different but I find them 100x less stressful.
My problem is, if I call someone and they lie to me I'm the one who gets fucked, if I send an email they get fucked if they lie.
In boomer times, phone calls were expensive and were transferred over landlines. It had an impact on the quality of the conversation.
Today people call you with 1% battery while at the register of the supermarket and instantly launch into a monologue about how they know it's not a good time to call, and they might even cut off any moment, and they know you're usually busy at 10am on a work day, but they really need to know if they can call you "later" to discuss something really important. And before you can tell them anything, they cut off. At least it's over!
10 minutes later they call you from their car and it takes them a couple of minutes to get the audio working so they can repeat everything they said earlier. It's what you have to do if a call was cut off! Then they drive into a tunnel.
Dealing with this shit is a dark art fr
I'm on the youngest side of the millennials, when do I inherit, since I often like to phone in, as these days if you want something fixed quick, you're better off calling (in Australia at least).
Much better waiting on hold for 10 mins than who knows how many business days before the customer service inevitably copy pastes something from the FAQ that doesn't resolve your problem.
Also, I like to call friends, on the phone. And use SMS 0_0
Again, when can I get my inheritance, thanks haha
Yeah I can do this. And am not even 30 yet.
Nope.
It would probably help if phone calls still really existed as a method of getting stuff done but the amount of places not bothering / having automated / foreign staff for their call centers makes them basically pointless and a completely different skill set compared to old school charisma and phone etiquette.
Patience and stubbornness to deal with the bullshit and still keep the effort applied will win.
Not some skill that feels nostalgic and forgotten like phone calls or cursive will save you from the onslaught of time.
Something that has me feeling old as shit is youngsters use loud speaker in public, on the bus, in city centre, now this would make sense to me if they were in a group but nope its just one person and I hear the entire conversation from both sides.
It isn't even just "youngsters" at this point, it's people in basically every possible demographic, and it's absolutely infuriating. It's literally never been easier to consume vast amounts of media privately, even in public. With shit like the Apple Vision or other headsets and a good pair of noise canceling headphones, you could literally be watching the dirtiest porn imaginable and no one would be the wiser, and yet people feel the need to assault everyone around them with their awful taste in content. And no, the type of content doesn't matter, I don't care if it's Lil Nas X, Bach, the Beatles, your favorite YouTuber, a TED Talk, or anything else. If you're playing it over a speaker in public, it's awful.
I also don't need to hear about your brother's tragic drug problems over speakerphone while I'm shopping for groceries, I don't want to hear your obnoxiously loud TikToks while I'm taking a shit, and you can put your game of fucking Candy Crush on mute while you're on a redeye 8hr international flight and people are trying to sleep.
I am extremely introverted, but working as a software engineer in a consultancy where the owner wanted engineers to be on the end of phones for clients was in many ways a godsend. The secret of calls is that everyone also hates it. The secret of eye contact is that the other person hates it too, so just do it enough to show that you've tried and that's the acceptable norm.
Phone calls are a trap. Little good comes from answering them.
when yall stop making eye contact, you've truly lost your humanity
Some of us are autistic, Harold.
i'm on the spectrum myself, but i was raised before awareness was widespread. i overcame it, and i'm thankful because it's a lonely place inside my head compared to the joy of sharing interactions with people IRL.
That's absolutely fair; I guess, more so, what I was trying to push against is the implication that eye contact is a necessary component of sharing interactions with people IRL (and, rather, it's perfectly possible to be IRL with others without eye contact), if that distinction makes more sense.
Depends, it seems quite inhuman to make eye contact while in an online text conversation. Can you imagine you are typing a response on Lemmy and suddenly some eyes appear on your screen looking at you from the post you are responding to?
phone calls
Even Boomers know not to answer their phones anymore
You want something done? You march into someone's office. And when I say march, I mean march.
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
