January 16, 2011

Telephone Hatred

customer-service-sucks-ass.jpg

Anyone who really knows me well can tell you that I hate the telephone. I always have and probably always will. Why? You may ask.

Because I am a writer, that’s why.

Telephones make noise. They break your line of thought just by ringing. It can be an intrusion into a delightful storyline that you just lost track of because..the GD phone just rang!

Many of my friends laughed at me when I accepted a job as a customer service rep for a medical supply company simply because they knew of my animosity for the telephone. “Why on God’s green green earth would you accept a job that heavily relies on you answering a telephone?” my girlfriend at the time asked. As she can still attest, getting Mike on the other end of a phone was tricky at best.

When someone calls you on a telephone it forces you to turn your attention towards them. To hell with what you were doing previously, you must now completely change your train of thought to deal with whomever has called. We go from a developing story about an interstellar battle to a conversation about dinner plans for Saturday night. For someone who has trouble with multi-tasking (e.g. me), this can be a big problem.

That is why I hate the telephone.