[Cialug] another phone

[Jeff Chapin]

When I had a landline of my own, the first two things I did was turn off
the ringer, and put a message on the answering machine letting people
know to email me if it was urgent, and that I only checked the answering
machine every couple of days.

I absolutely hated getting phone calls when I was doing something I felt
was important to respond to other people when it was convenient to them,
and have to drop what I was doing to see what it was they wanted and how
important it was to me.

Phones in general always seemed sort of rude to me, and the advent of
easier screening methods have only made it less so. Screening, to me, is
all about being accommodating to both people to 'negotiate' a mutually
convenient time to talk.

Jeff

Dave J. Hala Jr. wrote:
> I grew up in the landline era. I've found that I constantly screen calls
> and I have absolutely no misgivings about it. If your caller id shows as
> "unknown", I don't even bother to answer.
>
> I teach some classes in the evening, and if a cell phone rings, the
> owner is doing pushups. If noone claims the phone, everyone  does
> pushups.
>
> :) Dave
>
>
> On Mon, 2008-03-31 at 11:43 -0500, Nathan Stien wrote:
>   
>> On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 11:35 AM, Todd Walton <tdwalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> Like with email, there's a rhythm you can adopt that will let you keep
>>> your insanity.  In other words, don't always answer the phone, and
>>> don't always call back right away.
>>>       
>> There seems to be a generation gap regarding the acceptability of
>> screening calls.  In the age of ubiquitous mobile phones, screening
>> calls is a vital tactic.  It seems to me that many people who
>> developed their phone manners in the landline era (esp. before caller
>> ID and voicemail) tend to consider screening calls to be impermissibly
>> rude.  That attitude leads to trouble in the current technological
>> context.
>>
>> - Nathan
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