Ok, I realize that several of the last few posts have been me complaining about various things. I don't consider myself to be a negative person, but let's face it. We all have times where we all gripe a little bit. I guess a lot of these things have been on my mind lately and I just need to get it out there and I have to admit that writing about these things have helped me a lot.
So the thing on my mind this time around is phone etiquette. The thing that got me thinking about this is that lately I've noticed that if I call someone and leave a message for them, there is a lot of times that I either won't get a call back, or they call back two or three days later. I understand that there are times when our schedules conflict and we literally don't have the time, but is the world really coming to a point when we can't find the time to make a simple phone call? The whole idea of the phone was to speed up communication.
Over 100 years ago, if someone wanted to talk to someone, they would make a long walk to the other person's house, or wait to catch them in town, or write a letter. They would have to wait a long time sometimes. It's not like that today, but if someone calls me and I wasn't able to answer, I call them back when I can. The return call will always be in the same day that I missed the call. That's how I thought it went.
Ok, say that a girl really likes me, but I don't feel the same way about her. If I miss her call, regardless of what I think about the girl, I will call her back. Ok, in this situation I could understand not returning a call sometimes, but still. Suppose a friend calls and invites me to a movie. I would call them back when I was available and let them know if I could or could not go. If I didn't get the call till after it was too late, I would at least call them back and thank them for thinking about me.
Don't get me wrong. I do understand that circumstances vary for every situation. I also understand that sometimes it isn't done on purpose. We just get so busy that things slip our minds. Maybe it's the way things are in the places I live. Maybe it's the type of people I am interacting with. Maybe it's because I don't get text messages and people are responding but I don't get the text message. (The first 2 or 3 times this may be the case, but after that people learn that I don't get texts.)
I don't know. I could be paranoid, but it just seems that in most cases(certainly not all), if I leave a message, I don't get a response back. What happened to phone etiquette?
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2 comments:
Hey Josh-
I agree that for the most part phone etiquette has gone down the drain-but there are some things to consider.
Cell phones are far from flawless. Example: my phone is really bad about letting me know I have a voice mail. A couple weeks ago, Teal called me and left a message on a Friday night. The next evening, she sent me a text message asking if I had picked up the thing she had dropped off for me. I hadn't-as I didn't realize it was there. Two days later (Monday) as I am sitting at work, my phone beeps letting me know I have a message-it was Teal's voice mail from three days earlier.
Now, this is probably not the case every time and in every situation, but things like this are something to think about.
Though I do think that if it is a consistent thing and the same person ignores you over and over, it would not be rude to decide that person is one you don't want to waste your time on anymore.
Hmm, I forgot about the flawless cell phone thing, but in my case I've had it a few times. You make some good points though.
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