Husband won’t use the bloody phone

[littleredbumblebee]

It’s starting to get on my nerves now. When I say he won’t use the phone I mean to ring companies and businesses. He has spent 4 hours today trying to sort things out online: things that would be easy solved if he just rung the bloody places. He wants to add to his car insurance policy and he can’t find out online if the cover he has found with cover him for everything he needs. I said ring and ask but he won’t. He now says he is not bothered as it’s too much hassle. 4 hours on line for something that could have been solved on a five minute phone call- and he still has not found the answer online. I just know he will do it all again tomorrow.

he hates using the phone and it’s always me who phones places but some things like his own car insurance he needs to sort himself. He will find the answer eventually but it will take 2 bloody days as oppose to 5/10 minutes

before people ask he is perfectly fine is all other aspects of life. It just the phone

My DH is exactly the same. He's approx. 2 months in to sorting out a pension issue via email that could have been sorted by phone ages ago, but he won't call the company. I make 90% of our life admin phone calls. But if he absolutely has to call someone (like the doctor) I get him to make notes first so he has it all laid out in front of him. His issue is partly social anxiety and partly that he thinks people just don't take him seriously or actually listen to what he's saying, so he gets frustrated and it puts him off bothering again.

As a child/teen I hated using the phone but as an adult I just had to get used to it as it's part of adult life. Phoning companies does have it's perks. I recently booked a hire care and secured a massive discount compared to the online price as when I spoke to the reservation advisor she told me that being with the breakdown company I'm with comes with a big discount. None of that was mentioned anywhere online! I've had similar things happen with holidays and other services.

I hate chatbots, absolute rage inducing things!

Me too, I was the same before there were online options. I either went somewhere in person, or if there was really no other way than calling, it would take several days to build up the courage. On the day I scheduled it to happen, I’d wake up sweaty knowing that in a few hours I have to make the call. Then there was a couple of hours of holding the phone, looking at the number, not being able to dial…whether or not people on this thread believe it, social anxiety is a real thing that can manifest itself in phone calls.

This is me! If a call is put in my work diary and I know it’s there and what it’s about - I’m fine. If someone rings me - I’m fine. Having to pick up the phone and randomly call someone - Nope.

I’ve also discovered I process things better in the written form. You could read me something or tell me something verbally and then ask me questions at the end and I would have no clue. Give me the same information written down for me to read myself and I’ll understand perfectly.
in work meetings I have to write detailed notes of what people tell me.

Ooh, this is me too! I'm a software developer, and absolutely loathe that every bloody coding tutorial is some kind of video now. Give me something written down!

Nope. There WAS an alternative.

It was simply going to the local branch of your bank, insurer, utility provider, etc. Phones only became commonplace in the 70s or so. Until the centralisation of the 90s or so, each town would have a tax office, multiple bank/building society branches, multiple insurance brokers, an electric board shop, a gas board shop, a post office, etc. People would just use local offices for basically everything they needed. They were on the High Streets alongside the shops etc. They wouldn't bank with, say, Yorkshire building society, if there wasn't a Yorkshire B/S office in their town/village.

It was the 80s/90s where firms/organisations realised they could close their local offices and force people to phone their regional/head office instead. So there was basically a pretty short time period where people had to phone for things. Nowadays, that's progressed to the internet.

Yup, I absolutely detest podcasts, webinars and tutorials that are nothing but someone talking to you and showing the occasional PP slide etc. I WANT to be able to read something, i.e. lecture notes, written tutorials, etc. I really struggle these days with the CPE that I have to do for my profession. Even worse are the seminars/webinars done by Teams where the speaker takes questions throughout the session - nothing written down at all - I just can't do with it.

Same with hobbies etc. I hate the podcasts/interviews given after our local club's footie matches by the manager, etc. Used to be far better when they'd put a transcript on their website or fans forum, but now you just get a link to listen/watch instead. That means 5 minutes of your life wasted listening to lots of irrelevances and gaps, and "uh's"., when I could speed read a transcript and pick out the important points for me in around a minute.

I hate making phone calls too. Okay with admin/ appt type but personal calls I dislike and dislike receiving.
I think it is because they are intrusive, not good at saying call back even if I can get a word in. Also sooo time consuming, caller saying I know how busy you are and then saying bye 10 times with new topics in between 🤔
Nope, not for me, like a FaceTime on occasion with little gd but even that I find hard as too much focus on my mug!!
However I'll WhatsApp/ FBmsg/ email happily as under my control and I'm not invading anybody's busy/ free time as they can respond when and if convenient...
Also agree that very few calls sort things out in 5 mins, it's usually the horrible circle of doom to find out you've been unfortunate!

Wasn't there someone who hit the nail on the head, something like

To hear is to forget
To read is to remember
To do is to understand

We had phone anxiety before the internet, we just didn’t have anywhere to talk about it.

just like we didn’t have anywhere to connect with other people about our other quirks. The world was a much harsher place when I was young. Now I can see I’m not that unusual.

Our children are being raised in such a more nurturing, diversity accepting environment. They still deal with anxiety and the fallout of living in a world not built for them, but I think they are going to be so much better off than we were. Knowing from a young age that you aren’t alone and that someone has your back when assholes tell you that you are weird or that your quirks are annoying.

I'll only call as a last resort.

After trying to deal with Virgin Media recently on the telephone. They were a nightmare. Calls randomly cutting off, outright lying (to the point I recorded a call as their complaints department didn't believe me).

Email, live chat, etc gives you a paper trail and is quicker most of the time. For small companies, it may be easier to call but for large companies, it takes much longer.

I cannot stand it if a company only have telephone options for customer service. It puts me off using them as I don't have ages to hang around making telephone calls, when I could just fire off a quick email and it gets dealt with much more efficiently.

DH is like this. His job involves speaking to people on the phone all day (inbound and outbound) but he'll only do it as a last resort at home.
To be fair though, phoning a company about something usually needs a free afternoon as it can often take forever to get through.

I have always had this and if you knew me you’d be shocked as I’m very confident and sociable in every other aspect of my life. I think I’ve got worse because these days I hardly ever have to call anyobe, so when I do I get even more stressed about it (taxis, take always etc.). It’s only really when it’s people I don’t know. Completely irrational.

I've got a hearing impediment where whilst I "can" hear things, the sounds aren't clear, so trying to hear words is particularly hard. I didn't realise at first, but finally worked it out as a teenager when I couldn't hear song lyrics clearly which I thought was just the way it was, but then I realised friends and family knew the words, and could indeed hear them pretty clearly. And I'm not meaning the common "mis-hearings" like four hundred children instead of four hungry children, I'm meaning basically most of the song except for the repeated chorus.

When talking "in person", I can augment my dodgy hearing by looking at the lips, I suppose a kind of pseudo lip-reading.

But that's impossible on the phone. Not helped by poor quality phone signals, strong accents, background noises, etc.

That would drive me bonkers. Good luck! My DP doesn't kike ringing people up either, very irritating.

I will avoid using the phone at all costs if possible. It’s always a last resort. Causes me huge anxiety. For work I have hours of video calls every day (and do a job which require me to talk to people, I’m an analyst) which don’t bother me but a telephone call is outside my comfort zone. I have an irrational anxiety I will somehow lose all control of the English language on the phone.

I sympathise with your DH disliking the phone and with you for getting unreasonably annoyed about it, because I get similarly furious when my DH does things in a way that suits him but seems incredibly long-winded and inefficient to me. Like emptying the teapot and setting out mugs and milk and sugar BEFORE putting the kettle on. Grrrrrr.

I have to admit, I'm very similar. I lose concentration on the phone and that causes me to struggle.

Phones were common well before the 70's. You're only talking about interacting with larger businesses that people needed to use. We rang local businesses all the time. We talked to each other on the phone, sometimes for ages. We rang out from the workplace to speak to our customers. Oh, we rang each other on internal phones at work. The country was alive with phone calls. This didn't change until well into the 2000's

In 1970 only 35% of homes had a landline phone! By 1985 it was 80%. That shows a massive growth over those 15 years of the 70s and early 80s. Before the 70s, most people didn't have landlines.