Our home phone rang in the middle of the afternoon.
Our home phone rang in the middle of the afternoon.
“Ms. Gage?” the voice on the line asked.
“Who’s calling, please?” This is my usual opener when somebody asks for me by my last name.
“Ms. Gage, this is Hazel Hawkins Hospital …”
“We’re not interested, thank you anyway,” I said, proud of myself for fending off yet another telemarketer with dispatch yet only moderate rudeness. I went back to what I was doing.
The phone rang again and I began to worry that I had let a hospital bill go unpaid and the accounts payable office was going to pester me until I paid. I considered not answering the phone, but also didn’t like the idea of the message they might leave.
“Ms. Gage?” a laughing voice asked again. “I’m calling from Hazel Hawkins Hospital to set up an appointment with you.”
I had been waiting for this call. I need to have something checked out and I’ve been eager to get the appointment set up and get on with it. I laughed and apologized to the woman on the phone.
To me, this is a telling episode. Where once I was too polite to hang up on a recorded message, at least before the voice paused for air, I now hang up on live human beings before they have a chance to give me information in my own interest.
My current callousness may in part be blamed on the recent election, which brought with it dozens of unwanted calls from all directions. Does anybody really listen to a recorded political message? Especially the ones that ask you to “Please wait for an important message?” Maybe the strategists figure enough will get recorded on answering machines to be played back while the recipient, arriving home at the end of a day’s work, flops in a chair, too exhausted to push the button.
When the telephone was not yet universal, the phone was a medium for carrying real voices to real people. Most calls were interesting, and long-distance calls were downright precious. You had to place a call through the operator, and person-to-person cost more than station-to-station.
If you needed to receive messages while you were away from your office, you hired an answering service. A real person would answer the phone and write down whatever message the caller cared to leave.
Now most people have phones with built in answering machines, and of course, cell phones and most businesses have voice mail. So while hardly anybody answers the phone on the first try, messages can follow them everywhere.
People seem more and more desperate to stay connected with each other, yet not necessarily face-to-face. They call, receive calls, check messages, and instant message no matter where they are or what else they’re doing: in the car, cruising the aisle at Costco (why bring a list – just phone home), waiting in line at Starbucks, even carrying on another conversation.
At the same time, we are equally desperate to escape the commercial and political onslaught.
Elizabeth Gage writes a column for the Free Lance on Thursdays.
