Friday, June 15, 2007
Blowing up my phone
Over the last week, I have had four separate people bitch at me about my telephone habits, specifically my custom of sending people to voicemail and then failing to listen to my messages or call them back in a timely manner. This irritates the shit out of me, because I have always been like this with regard to phone use, and I'm not going to change in response to what I consider petulant nagging. I feel too strongly about hating talking on the phone.
I do not like talking on the phone. From about the ages of 10-16, I was a phone junkie, but that was because I was an adolescent girl and not yet able to drive. After my driver's license freed me from being stuck in Puyallup without a ride, however, I found that I much preferred conversing with my friends and associates in person than via phone. Since then, my phone conversations are usually terse, and limited to "What time do you want to meet? Where? See you there." There are exceptions where I will indulge long phone conversations. These are in three particular situations:
1. I'm talking to my parents and/or brother, who live in the glorious P-N-Dub and who I cannot get together with in person.
2. I'm talking with friends who also don't live in the greater New York metropolitan area, who I cannot get together with in person.
3. I'm calling customer service at (select: Time Warner Cable/Con Ed/Sprint PCS/credit card company/some other bullshit account for a paid service I require), and am either stuck on hold forever or occasionally shouting at some semi-literate representative who can do nothing but say, "Please hold, Ms. Rommizen, while I get my manager", leaving me infuriated that no matter how many fucking times I spell it out, these people always butcher the pronunciation of my last name.
Unless it's an emergency, I can't be bothered with long phone conversations when I could just make plans to meet and chat about whatever in person. Emergencies happen very rarely, but often people disagree with me about what one entails. G-Boner thinks she has an emergency every other week, when really it's just some sort of minor tiff with one of the Deckmates or whatever nautical term they use to refer to her underlings at the Trader Joe's she manages, or a retelling of some sort of humorous correspondence with some distant acquaintance on MySpace. In my mind, emergencies are "I have cancer, venereal disease, or some other grave medical condition" (this is particularly relevant to me because all my non-grad school friends think I'm the next best thing to a real doctor on account of being the only one who understands a damn thing about biology or science), "My significant other hit me or otherwise abused me and I need help moving out and a place to stay", and "OH MY GOD, I'm PREGNANT!", not "so-and-so didn't stock the cheese cooler correctly" or "look at the comment so-and-so left on my MySpace page."
If people need a lengthy opinion from me, I prefer to e-mail. I can express myself most clearly in writing, and because I can type very fast, most efficiently as well. Furthermore, I don't have to deal with being interrupted by cell phone issues. Since I'm in lab approximately 99% of the time, where I get a fucking horrible cell phone signal, I don't usually even bother taking my phone out of my bag because attempts to conversate via it are routinely dropped or full of static. Also, I find it very difficult to multitask when talking on the phone. It distracts me, and if I try to do even the most mundane tasks while on the phone (enter data, load gels, dilute samples, etc.), I usually end up not paying attention to half the conversation and fucking up whatever I'm working on, making it a double exercise in futility. If people need to get hold of me for whatever reason while I'm at work, e-mail, instant message, or text message are my preferred means of contact.
On several occasions, people have tried to change my anti-phone ways, at their peril. I went out with this one guy a few times, and he would call me in between dates and just start chit-chatting away about everything from his favorite TV shows to his educational debt to his recent trip to Nigeria. When I told him, "Okay, let's just figure out what day we're both available to go have dinner and then subsequent sex, I'm busy watching Bev Niner," he would be like, "Well, then you can talk!" When I would say, "But I don't like talking on the phone, let's just get together," he would cockily reply, "You'll like talking on the phone after you hang out with me for awhile." I privately wondered why, because his phone conversations mainly revolved around his weight lifting regimen, his love for WWE wrestling, the bureaucratic ins and outs of his residency, and what new South Beach Diet-friendly stir-fry recipes he'd invented. I put up with this temporarily, because the sex was okay, his weiner was pretty solid, and he was just the type of dude I like (hot, smart black doctor with an interest in celebrity gossip, my ass, performing oral, and paying for copious amounts of scotch). Unfortunately, the phone thing got old after a while, since he'd always harp on it. Furthermore, there were a couple other unrelated things he did that bothered me. One time, he kept taking a condom off and putting it back on because he liked to ride bareback but then would have guilt about doing so, which was incredible enough in itself considering he had gone to medical school and should know that if you're going to do that, what's the point of even using the damn thing? This stretched the condom out to the point that it lost some of its elasticity, and it got balled up and stuck up in my vadge. He offered to perform a PELVIC EXAM on me, which I balked at, because even if dude was a doctor, he's not my damn gynecologist. I informed him that his only business with my vagina was sticking his dick in it, and I'd fish out the condom ball myself. Another time, after he gave me yet another string of complaints about the brevity of my phone mannerisms, he made it apparent that he was keeping track of how many orgasms I'd had since we started dating, and referred to it as "you cummed twice the last time I stayed over." The scorekeeping certainly put me off, as did hearing someone who graduated from an Ivy League medical school using verb conjugation apparently learned from erotic letters to Swank. Plus he had the weirdest nipples I have ever seen. They were literally bifurcated, and looked like fleshy carving forks sticking out of his chest. Between these incidences, his regular hinting about his fondness for monogamous relationships, and his near-constant nagging about my not talking to him on the phone enough, I decided that his behavior was cumulatively a deal-breaker. I figured the punishment should fit the crime, so I dumped him by never answering another one of his calls. I never promised his ass a rose garden, and indeed all he ever got from me after that was a trip directly to my voice mail.
The moral of this story is that pestering me about my phone habits will get one nowhere. In fact, it will only draw my attention to other things that annoy me, and ultimately provoke my ire and scorn. Granted, I won't drop most people like some random honey with bifurcated nipples, bizarre birth control practices, and bad grammar who I've slept with on a handful of occasions, but I will be entirely less likely to take your calls if hassled about it. My associates, especially those who live in New York and who can eventually see me in person, need to take this under advisement, because I'm really getting sick of hearing passive-aggressive bullshit like, "God, I totally called you last weekend and you didn't return my call...I hope you were doing something REALLY IMPORTANT" or "I called you like FOUR HOURS AGO. What could you POSSIBLY have been doing?" Well, I could have been working, hanging with someone else and not wanting to be rude, at a movie, in the subway, running, walking my dogs, or just NOT IN THE MOOD TO TALK ON THE FUCKING PHONE. If it's important, send me a fucking text saying to call you back ASAP, or just keep calling and eventually I'll figure out that it's critical for me to pick up. I don't like the phone and I'm not going to change. Either learn to text me as a first-line means of communication or learn to love my voicemail, because me changing this aspect of my life elicits the same response as the prospect of me going brunette: SHA RIGHT.
I do not like talking on the phone. From about the ages of 10-16, I was a phone junkie, but that was because I was an adolescent girl and not yet able to drive. After my driver's license freed me from being stuck in Puyallup without a ride, however, I found that I much preferred conversing with my friends and associates in person than via phone. Since then, my phone conversations are usually terse, and limited to "What time do you want to meet? Where? See you there." There are exceptions where I will indulge long phone conversations. These are in three particular situations:
1. I'm talking to my parents and/or brother, who live in the glorious P-N-Dub and who I cannot get together with in person.
2. I'm talking with friends who also don't live in the greater New York metropolitan area, who I cannot get together with in person.
3. I'm calling customer service at (select: Time Warner Cable/Con Ed/Sprint PCS/credit card company/some other bullshit account for a paid service I require), and am either stuck on hold forever or occasionally shouting at some semi-literate representative who can do nothing but say, "Please hold, Ms. Rommizen, while I get my manager", leaving me infuriated that no matter how many fucking times I spell it out, these people always butcher the pronunciation of my last name.
Unless it's an emergency, I can't be bothered with long phone conversations when I could just make plans to meet and chat about whatever in person. Emergencies happen very rarely, but often people disagree with me about what one entails. G-Boner thinks she has an emergency every other week, when really it's just some sort of minor tiff with one of the Deckmates or whatever nautical term they use to refer to her underlings at the Trader Joe's she manages, or a retelling of some sort of humorous correspondence with some distant acquaintance on MySpace. In my mind, emergencies are "I have cancer, venereal disease, or some other grave medical condition" (this is particularly relevant to me because all my non-grad school friends think I'm the next best thing to a real doctor on account of being the only one who understands a damn thing about biology or science), "My significant other hit me or otherwise abused me and I need help moving out and a place to stay", and "OH MY GOD, I'm PREGNANT!", not "so-and-so didn't stock the cheese cooler correctly" or "look at the comment so-and-so left on my MySpace page."
If people need a lengthy opinion from me, I prefer to e-mail. I can express myself most clearly in writing, and because I can type very fast, most efficiently as well. Furthermore, I don't have to deal with being interrupted by cell phone issues. Since I'm in lab approximately 99% of the time, where I get a fucking horrible cell phone signal, I don't usually even bother taking my phone out of my bag because attempts to conversate via it are routinely dropped or full of static. Also, I find it very difficult to multitask when talking on the phone. It distracts me, and if I try to do even the most mundane tasks while on the phone (enter data, load gels, dilute samples, etc.), I usually end up not paying attention to half the conversation and fucking up whatever I'm working on, making it a double exercise in futility. If people need to get hold of me for whatever reason while I'm at work, e-mail, instant message, or text message are my preferred means of contact.
On several occasions, people have tried to change my anti-phone ways, at their peril. I went out with this one guy a few times, and he would call me in between dates and just start chit-chatting away about everything from his favorite TV shows to his educational debt to his recent trip to Nigeria. When I told him, "Okay, let's just figure out what day we're both available to go have dinner and then subsequent sex, I'm busy watching Bev Niner," he would be like, "Well, then you can talk!" When I would say, "But I don't like talking on the phone, let's just get together," he would cockily reply, "You'll like talking on the phone after you hang out with me for awhile." I privately wondered why, because his phone conversations mainly revolved around his weight lifting regimen, his love for WWE wrestling, the bureaucratic ins and outs of his residency, and what new South Beach Diet-friendly stir-fry recipes he'd invented. I put up with this temporarily, because the sex was okay, his weiner was pretty solid, and he was just the type of dude I like (hot, smart black doctor with an interest in celebrity gossip, my ass, performing oral, and paying for copious amounts of scotch). Unfortunately, the phone thing got old after a while, since he'd always harp on it. Furthermore, there were a couple other unrelated things he did that bothered me. One time, he kept taking a condom off and putting it back on because he liked to ride bareback but then would have guilt about doing so, which was incredible enough in itself considering he had gone to medical school and should know that if you're going to do that, what's the point of even using the damn thing? This stretched the condom out to the point that it lost some of its elasticity, and it got balled up and stuck up in my vadge. He offered to perform a PELVIC EXAM on me, which I balked at, because even if dude was a doctor, he's not my damn gynecologist. I informed him that his only business with my vagina was sticking his dick in it, and I'd fish out the condom ball myself. Another time, after he gave me yet another string of complaints about the brevity of my phone mannerisms, he made it apparent that he was keeping track of how many orgasms I'd had since we started dating, and referred to it as "you cummed twice the last time I stayed over." The scorekeeping certainly put me off, as did hearing someone who graduated from an Ivy League medical school using verb conjugation apparently learned from erotic letters to Swank. Plus he had the weirdest nipples I have ever seen. They were literally bifurcated, and looked like fleshy carving forks sticking out of his chest. Between these incidences, his regular hinting about his fondness for monogamous relationships, and his near-constant nagging about my not talking to him on the phone enough, I decided that his behavior was cumulatively a deal-breaker. I figured the punishment should fit the crime, so I dumped him by never answering another one of his calls. I never promised his ass a rose garden, and indeed all he ever got from me after that was a trip directly to my voice mail.
The moral of this story is that pestering me about my phone habits will get one nowhere. In fact, it will only draw my attention to other things that annoy me, and ultimately provoke my ire and scorn. Granted, I won't drop most people like some random honey with bifurcated nipples, bizarre birth control practices, and bad grammar who I've slept with on a handful of occasions, but I will be entirely less likely to take your calls if hassled about it. My associates, especially those who live in New York and who can eventually see me in person, need to take this under advisement, because I'm really getting sick of hearing passive-aggressive bullshit like, "God, I totally called you last weekend and you didn't return my call...I hope you were doing something REALLY IMPORTANT" or "I called you like FOUR HOURS AGO. What could you POSSIBLY have been doing?" Well, I could have been working, hanging with someone else and not wanting to be rude, at a movie, in the subway, running, walking my dogs, or just NOT IN THE MOOD TO TALK ON THE FUCKING PHONE. If it's important, send me a fucking text saying to call you back ASAP, or just keep calling and eventually I'll figure out that it's critical for me to pick up. I don't like the phone and I'm not going to change. Either learn to text me as a first-line means of communication or learn to love my voicemail, because me changing this aspect of my life elicits the same response as the prospect of me going brunette: SHA RIGHT.
Labels: for serious people, intentional buffoonery, ranting, Razzification, real-life rejects
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hey dude. i hate talking on the phone too! except to you, isn't that kind of weird? i think it's because we never attempt to "catch up" in our occasional hour-long conversations; we stick to light subjects, as if we were in fact hanging out in person. we talk about our dogs, and to each other in their dog voices. we monitor the odd awards show. anyway, this is just to say, the way you described your habits with the cell phone are *exactly* like mine. i have nine messages from the last five days that i haven't listened to. i only check my messages on the weekend. ;) smooches!
ps. the lamp shade is SO SAD!
ps. the lamp shade is SO SAD!
# posted by 
: 6/15/2007 8:41 PM
: 6/15/2007 8:41 PM
Dude, your calls fall under exception #2 (the friends who live far away clause), and that's only because we can't hang out in person, so we have to teleconference in order for our dogs to conversate, and for us to abuse certain fugly, unremarkable, horribly stupid bitches who acted the fool at your wedding. I feel you. That's why I never get mad when you send me to voice mail, and vice versa.
P.S. Tell D that if it makes her feel any better, Chingy! had to wear a lampshade once for his hot spots, and Caesar had to wear one when he had foot surgery, and they both hated them too!
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P.S. Tell D that if it makes her feel any better, Chingy! had to wear a lampshade once for his hot spots, and Caesar had to wear one when he had foot surgery, and they both hated them too!
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