Tag: telephone

#oneaday Day 554: Telephobia

If you phone me, it’s entirely possible that I won’t want to talk to you. I might not even answer. I’m not being a dick, and I still like you, I just hate talking on the phone.

Actually, it goes deeper than that. I am fucking petrified of talking on the phone.

Here’s what happens when I receive a phone call:

Phone rings.

“Shit! My phone’s ringing,” I think. “I wish my ringtone wasn’t so loud/embarrassing.”

I mute the ringtone and look at the display to see who’s calling.

“I don’t want to answer that if I don’t know who it is,” I think if I see a blocked number. “They must have bad news for me or want to yell at me; I must have done something wrong,” I think if I see a number for someone I recognise.

“But wait,” I then think. “Wasn’t there that thing I was hoping to hear back from? Maybe it’s that.”

“Oh, but what the hell will I say?” the irrational side of my mind says. “You have enough trouble dealing with people in person at times, you can’t fill awkward silences on the phone with hand gestures or pretending to cough or something.”

“Just do it,” says the rational side of my head. “What, seriously, is the worst possible thing that could happen?”

“I don’t want anyone to listen to me on the phone,” chimes in the irrational side of my head. “But if you must, answer it.” I disappear into a room (or outside if a convenient room isn’t available), close the door so no-one can listen in and take a deep breath, preparing to take the call.

Unfortunately, by this time, my voicemail has usually taken over and a whole new set of anxieties take the place of the original fears. I see a voicemail message come in and I’m hesitant to listen to it just in case it’s someone, again, yelling at me. I don’t generally give people reasons to yell at me, but still the natural assumption for me when I receive a voicemail is that it’s someone yelling at me, particularly if I’ve had something important to do recently and I’m paranoid that I may have forgotten to do any or all of it.

It’s no better when I have a phone call to make. Here’s how that goes:

Look at phone number written down.

Look at phone.

Rehearse start of conversation in head, or at least attempt to.

Wonder what might happen if person on other end of phone deviates from script in my head.

Panic a bit.

Look at phone number again.

Rehearse alternative start of conversation in head. Wonder what the other possibilities might be.

Stare at phone for a bit.

Pick up phone. Start to dial number.

Stop.

Wait.

Think a bit more.

Swallow heavily.

Put down phone. Go and do something less stressful, like giving haircuts with a chainsaw.

(As an aside, oddly enough I seem to be just fine with “professional” phone calls. It’s the more “personal” calls that I have difficulty dealing with. I worry that the person on the other end will judge me, misunderstand my long silences or call me a twat.)

I hate this part of myself. It’s a genuine phobia, irrational and all, and a bit of casual Internet research suggests that I’m not the only person who feels this way, not by a long shot. It even has a proper name — telephobia (or, depending on who you talk to, the tongue-twisting telephonophobia or simply “telephone phobia”) — but that doesn’t really make me feel much better about it.

The solution to it is, as suggested by several people, to deliberately put myself into situations where I have to make phone calls. I’ve done temp work that would have involved answering the phone. I couldn’t do it. I froze up, petrified, whenever the phone rang. I had to speak to my temporary boss almost in tears telling her that I just couldn’t answer the phone. Deliberately put myself in that situation again? Sadly, it might work — but I just don’t feel up to it, yet.

The phone is a pain in the arse. Even if I actually liked talking on it, I’d likely still think it was a pain in the arse. It’s obtrusive, it interrupts things, you can’t do anything else while you’re talking on the phone (unless you have one of those Bluetooth headsets, and then you just look like a tit, plus people can then hear you pissing/making a sandwich/walking around outside/watching TV) and it’s impossible to end a conversation effectively.

This hatred is, I know, all part of the “irrational” part of the phobia and I’m sure that if I was able to cope with it, I’d probably, in fact, actually quite like talking to people on the phone. But while a phone ringing and the prospect of having to answer it completely terrifies me and fills me with a sense of panic and dread… no thanks. I’ll stick to forms of communication I’m actually comfortable with and can take my time over, thanks.

For now, anyway.

#oneaday, Day 269: Things To Do While Waiting For The Phone To Ring

Of all the items of technology the human race has ever invented, the humble phone is surely one which has the greatest hold over our lives. It can make us drop what we’re doing and run off somewhere. It can make us laugh, make us cry, make us scared. And it can make us wait. Wait for hours.

You might be waiting for the results of a job interview. An STD test. A loved one’s driving test. You might be waiting for a special person to call. You might be hoping that someone from your place of work doesn’t call because you skived off today and you think someone might have seen you on your lunch break. You might be waiting for a utility company to “call you back” with the results of an enquiry you made six months ago.

In short, you could be waiting for lots of things. Which means you could be spending an awfully long time sitting and staring at your phone, particularly if you’re kicking yourself that you gave the person you’re expecting to call you back your landline number. Because who the hell uses landlines any more anyway? Mobile’s where it’s at. With a mobile phone you don’t have to sit and stare at the phone, willing it to ring. Of course, in practice all that happens is you tend to sit on the couch with your mobile nearby instead of near the phone table. Because you don’t dare go anywhere in case you miss an important phone call. And heaven forbid if you ever have to answer an important phone call while you’re engaged in toilet activity of the sitting-down variety. (“Is that an echo?” they’ll say. “Where are you?” “In a cave,” you’ll reply, a little too quickly. “A cave with a mobile mast on top of it.”)

So what to do while you’re waiting for the phone to ring? It can’t be anything which you have to commit to, because you might have to drop everything at a moment’s notice to go and answer the phone call. It can’t be anything that gets your hands dirty, because no-one likes picking up a phone with dirty hands. And it can’t possibly be anything which requires you to go outside, because then other people might hear you discussing your itchy parts with the nurse.

So, here are five suggestions.

1. Pair up your socks.

You’ve been meaning to do it for months. And you haven’t. So instead of sitting staring into space, why not make a start on it? Pairing up your socks is a job that you can easily leave unfinished and go back to, months later sometimes. Hence, it is an eminently waiting-for-phone-call-friendly activity. Experienced professionals with cordless phones can even continue pairing their socks while they are on the phone.

2. Play a casual game.

This is what casual games like Bejeweled, Peggle and the like were made for. Playable in short bursts, easy to jump out of at a moment’s notice if you need to and actually fun for those few minutes you’re waiting, they also give your brain a bit of a workout. Unless it’s Farmville, in which case all you’re working out is your clicking finger. Moo.

3. Play “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” on Wikipedia.

Here’s how this works. Pick two completely disparate topics. Open the Wikipedia page for one. Using six clicks or less, you must navigate your way to the second topic using only the hyperlinks within the Wiki articles.

4. Bleach the toilet.

You’ve been complaining for weeks that the toilet stinks, so go and squirt some bleach down it. This takes a matter of seconds. And if the phone rings once you’ve bleached it, it’ll be time to flush by the time you’re off the phone again.

5. Make me a coffee.

Well go on. Don’t just sit there.