Monday, November 30, 1998
Reach out and touch solicitors
STATUS: Growing dependence on telephones complicates need for
profitable conversation, business
If you could listen in while your neighbors ordered pizzas, you
would learn a good deal about communication. When the time came to
call the pizza place, you would almost definitely hear someone say,
"I’ll pay, as long as someone else orders."
See, some people have phone phobias – so, to help you out, this
column is all about the wonderful world of telephones. I’m sure
that you have friends who’d rather dig ditches than actually have
to deal with someone on the phone.
I suppose ditch digging isn’t all bad, but really, what kind of
a column topic would that be?
Telephone talk certainly has its bright spots. I had a
four-call-waiting phone call. How good is that? Basically, one can
rate a phone call as one would rate a movie going experience. How?
Well, when you go to the movies you have to wait through previews,
right? You should keep track of the number of previews, though; the
more previews you have to sit through, the better the movie is.
This rating system works the same way with phone calls – the
more interruptions, the better the phone call.
But seriously, I need a phone life. People get their phone bills
and they’ve called people all around the United States: New
Hampshire, Washington, D.C., Washington State, Ohio and sunny
Florida (as though sunny Florida really distinguishes it from
regular Florida).
I have only called the Bay Area. I’m jealous of those calls to
Hungary or Taiwan. I need someone to call in some exotic location
like Paris or Tokyo. I think that these people think that they’re
better than me because they call people out of state. You talk to
someone and they say, "Oh, the other day I called Alberta …
Canada you know." As though calling internationally is some sort of
status symbol.
But then there is the king of communications status symbols: the
cell phone.
You see a combination of business people and college students
walking around with these things. The business people, I suppose,
use them for "business" (it’s really to call home and say that
they’ll be late for dinner) and college students got snockered into
buying another thing that they really don’t need.
After all, what college student really needs a phone all the
time? (Don’t answer that.)
Bottom line: I have no phone life. Maybe I should pick up a
cellular phone. But, I know – use it with caution. I was sitting in
a coffee shop once, and there was a guy sitting in his yuppie
business suit talking into a cell phone.
He was speaking loudly, saying things like, "Buy, buy, buy!"
And, "No, I won’t need the house in the Hamptons this weekend."
Then, as he was talking, the phone rang.
Consider his ego successfully deflated.
Speaking of egos, have you ever had someone call you and you
really need their phone number from the end of the message, and of
course, as a good telephone message giver they’ve left it, but …
guess what? They’ve decided to rattle off their phone number too
quickly for you to figure out what their number is.
It’s just like trying to read someone’s writing who really can’t
write – you know they’re really just kind of faking it.
According to a recent poll, 69 percent of women across the
United States have given a fake phone number to a hormone-driven
shark.
If a woman is completely paranoid, then she writes a phone
number that’s completely different – area code and everything. If
she feels like messing with him, then she writes a phone number
that’s just illegible. And if she really wants to mess with him,
then she writes the phone numbers almost correctly, just changing
one of the digits. Then, if she has to see the guy again, and he
asks why she gave him the wrong phone number, she can say that he
must have misread the phone number, so it was just his fault.
Phone calls are the same way; if you’re obligated to call
someone back, but you really don’t want them to call back (an
ex-girlfriend, for example), then you can just rattle off the phone
number too quickly for human-hearing to understand.
Phones are important, though, but I didn’t know how hard life
would be without a wireless phone until I came to school. What can
you do without one? In my apartment, we don’t have a cordless
phone, and life is crazy. Cords leading everywhere – and every now
and then the phone doesn’t work – and we have to check every,
single cord.
Advertisers know how important phones are to people’s everyday
lives, but they don’t use the phone to advertise. I’ve never
received a phone call from McDonald’s, Ford or Calvin Klein. (Can
you imagine what Calvin Klein commercials would be like over the
phone?) Only one part of the advertising world advertises on the
phones: the phone companies.
Kind of ironic, don’t you think?
Still, the one group of people you don’t want calling you are
the long-distance phone-service people. I never knew how annoying
these people were until I finally talked to them the other
night.
I’m sitting at home, just taking it easy, and I get a phone
call. I didn’t want to answer it, perhaps because I already knew.
And my dog, sitting in the corner, gets up and leaves, because he
knows that something bad is coming.
So I pick up the phone, and she says that she represents
blah-blah phone company. She says that she would like to tell me
about the wonderful savings that I’m missing out on. She goes on
and on and on and on and on and on.
I go back to watching my television show, and she keeps on
talking. Then she asks if I wanted to switch long distance phone
companies. I say, "No."
And, she says, "What!"
And I say, "I didn’t know you were going to take it personally."
Then she pulls out her Wicked Witch of the East voice and says,
"I’m not taking it personal."
I pretty much gave up at that point, because I really didn’t
want to continue the conversation. Do I really want to prolong the
agony? Of course not.
Still, there are ways to cut people off without saying you don’t
want to talk to them.
Some people believe that you don’t learn anything in college
that’s applicable to daily life. Not true. They’re wrong.
There’s at least one little bit of knowledge that is very very
helpful. I’m a communication studies student, and so I take some
sociology classes. And, in the sociology department there are some
professors who do what is called "Conversation Analysis."
And, they’ve found that the word "OK" is used to move on to the
next subject. Not only that, but "OK" is used twice at the end of a
conversation, so … guess what?
If the conversation really doesn’t seem to have any end in
sight, then you can encourage the end to "come a little closer" by
using "OK."
Another "solicitor" called me the other night and I let him
speak a little bit and I just said "OK … OK… OK" – and I cut
right through his schpeel to the part when he says, "You have a
good evening, sir."
And I did.
But in the end, I know telephone wires, for a lot of you, are
umbilical cords that connect you to life as you know it, connecting
you to what you need to survive: conversation.
And that’s OK.
Spencer Hill
Hill is a fourth-year communication studies student. E-mail
comments to [email protected].
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