AIBU to ignore frequent long voice notes from a new friend?

[Boxfulloftoys]

Recently became friends/acquaintances with somebody in the same line of work as me. She is very nice but very full on. She regularly sends me voice notes that are a minumum of five minutes long. I work full time,have four teenagers and life is busy. She is single with no children. Anyway yesterday I had a rare day of and I get four messages in the space of 30 minutes. To be honest I didn't even listen to them until this morning.

One of the messages was basically for me to be more considerate and reply. I skipped the rest of the messages. I hate voice notes but I did say that I was of yesterday and didn't want to be on my phone. That was 9am and no reply.

Was I being unreasonable to not reply to her messages yesterday. She always replies to mine straight away. I do like her but I don't even message my closest friends daily let alone send them numerous voice messages.

Immediate red flag there: no other friends. I wonder why.

tell her youve no time these days sorry. short texts are great. anything else and it’ll be put in the queue for dealing with later and i never get round to it. no offence. i do the same with any of my friends, i hope you understand.

I loathe voice notes.
I have a baby and normally I reply to messages at night when he's breastfeeding to sleep. I am not digging head phones out to listen to a voice note. It's getting ignored.
I work an office job and can reply to messages on my breaks etc but I'm not going to play a voice note out loud in a communal lunch area & I don't carry headphones around with me. It just pushes it back days until I remember to find a time to listen to it out loud.
Then if there's information in there I actually need to refer back to, its such a pain.
I have said to people before, sorry it takes me a while to find the right time to listen to voice notes. It's up to them if they choose to use them, but I can't prioritise listening.

Argh! I've known ppl like this and we no longer speak. Red flag that you only just made friends and she's already saying be more considerate and reply. That might be ok if it was your mum or old friend and they were telling you something imminent, but not for a newbie who seems to immediately expect your full attention. That'll be why she doesn't have other friends. Next it will be 'i feel like I've done something wrong' and throwing a pity party after being left on read for a whole 2 minutes 🙈

This is the reason she doesn’t have any other friends, though. Her need is bottomless. Nothing will ever be enough. She doesn’t register that other people exist except to meet her needs.

If you feel guilty and apologise that you can’t be constantly responsive and at her disposal all the time, she will keep making you feel guiltier and guiltier, and eventually when you can’t take it anymore, you will just be the latest person to cruelly abandon her, the person who’s hurt her the most because you were the one person she had thought she could rely on, etc etc.

The sooner you get out from under this dynamic the better. Rip the plaster off. The more time and attention you give her now the more awful she’ll be to you by the end.

Hi friend
I don't do voice notes sorry as i rarely have my headphones so can you send a text instead please

A family member started voice noting me / the chat. I replied "I'm not listening to that" and now they send texts like a everyone else.
Then I had hand problems in both hands. Used the dictate function as I could hardly send voice notes after refusing to listen to them! Oops.

I don't even own headphones so there is no chance for me to listen withouth whoever I am with hearing also.

Even if a person can’t use her hands to type for good medical reasons, why in the name of common sense would she not use one of the very many excellent dictation apps? Voice notes are the work of the devil. For all the very good reasons previously mentioned.

I just said yabu by accident.

you are being normal. Sounds quite intense and if you can’t reply at the rate she wants (which you don’t want to) then you need boundaries, like taking a day to reply / only replying to one in every three / saying to her that you’re so busy it may take you a while to reply….

This is not a friend, this is a vampire.

Just tell her you are not a fan of voice notes and its best of her not to send them!

I had a friend who turned in to a ‘pinger’. Voice notes, answer phone messages, stupid pointless messages throughout the day.

I work in a setting where I can’t be ‘on my phone’. I felt compelled to look if I got a notification of a message etc across 8 different platforms In case of emergency with kids, ancient relatives or heaven forbid, work!

She absolutely drove me mad. Asked her not to, set boundaries… but no, everything was all about her. I. The end I stoped responding at all. She wasn’t a friend just a voice screaming for attention.

Exactly! These people are a selfish drain on your time. They are not your friends.

You'd just get people sending a whole string of them, though... and they'd likely arrive out of order, so you wouldn't even have a clue where you were.

"Hi Friend,
As you've probably guessed, voicenotes don't work for me, and I very rarely have the opportunity to access them as I'd need alone time for that, haha!
Best way to contact me is by text, but even then, I'm not always in a position to reply same day, what with work and 4DC and everything else, it's often really late by the time I have the chance to even see my messages.
Hope to see you on Saturday as planned, really looking forward to catching up xxx"

Voice notes, are the same as answer phone messages. They are AWFUL and time consuming. And you can't quickly read them quietly whilst in the room with others and reply.

This is excellent advice without being unnecessarily rude.

I will however give a small positive shout out to them as another means of communication, because I do use voice notes, but I choose carefully whom I send them too and also the context behind the note.
Sometimes they are long. Sometimes not. It
depends on the situation.
If they don't work for you that's fine, not everyone is the same.

I find voice notes the height of arrogance and rudeness. They are sent by people who like to speak but not listen.

Voice notes are ideal for busy bosses to send to their (well-paid) executive assistants; but routinely sending them to friends and acquaintances is so arrogant.

You're expecting other people to listen back - probably multiple times - and carefully write down all that you said... when your entire reason for sending it instead of a text or WhatsApp is because you deemed it too much to have to write down!

YANBU. I'm ND and pretty much all my friends are as well, so this comes up as an issue quite often. Some of us can't cope with writing and/or reading lots of text so send voice notes. Then some of us can't bring ourselves to listen to voice notes, so they don't get listened to.

I find voice notes intrusive and inconvenient. I don't want to listen to them when I'm out, nor do I want to listen to them when I'm with my kids or other people. A voice note at home means that I have to turn the music or TV off/down and go somewhere private to listen. And i usually have to listen a few times because I get bored and zone out. I reply, and then have to wait for a response, so it goes on and on. I've told everyone that I won't listen to voice notes so there's no point in sending them.

Look, of course you're right, but it would put some people off, if you are limited in any way you may be more likely to be concise.

Regardless, bite size chunks would be preferable...

Id ban them altogether, but that would be a much harder sell...

I always leave a few hours before replying to messages.

I never reply immediately as it shows that you're always available and then it becomes an expectation.

Anything urgent warrants a phone call not a text/voice message.

I wonder if the voice note people are also the 'play your phone aloud in public' people? They don't understand why you can't just listen wherever you are because they'd happily inflict their drivel on anyone.

I hate voice notes!! Sounds very overwhelming to be honest. I wish people would either dictate them so you can read them quickly or just phone and have a quick conversation. I would try to have a conversation at some point and perhaps say that you struggle with voice notes from everyone as life is very busy and prefer text messages or proper catching up conversations when you see each other. Explain that 5 friends sending you voice notes every day takes an hour to listen to and you are time poor whereas skimming a text message takes seconds to read. You can only say how it makes you feel and then it’s up to other people how they deal with it.