Phones and talking

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Phones are the worst invention ever made (the electric chair beats it, seriously). It makes loud noises, you have to talk to people and are unable to multitask while doing so, people you don't know call you (often asking you personal information), and people you do know are always on the phone when you actually want/need to talk to them.

Worst invention ever.

I like talking on the phone, it's just sometimes i'll get mixed up but life goes on

I never liked the phone. Depending on my state of mind I have a hard time understanding what people are saying.

Other days it's fine. Funny.

I don't mind social calls to close friends/family, as long as I'm the one making the call. If I'm the one making the call it seems okay to me, I guess because I'm in control. I've made the decision to that I have time, and the energy to chat, and usually I have something that I want to specifically talk about. When someone calls me I go into panic mode staring at the caller id trying to decide if I'm gonna answer it or not. It feels like a surprise, and I can't decide if it's a good one, or a scary one. I like things to be planned out, and predictable. When someone calls me out of the blue it kinda throws me for a loop.

Making calls to places of business is one of my hated chores. I get out of it if at all possible. If I can't I write down everything that I'm gonna say, and practice it. Of course, that doesn't always work, and it leaves wanting to scream "no, I don't want to hear your specials! That wasn't in the script!" when ordering pizza. Of course I never scream. I let them tell me their specials only to left in a cloud of information overload, and unable to make any decision on what to order. This happens when I'm calling other places, too. If the person answering doesn't quickly get to the point of why I'm calling I seem to get confused, and unable to effectively communicate.

I've actually managed to get pretty good at talking on the phone, I still talk across people nearly all the time but most people have a kind of dread regarding phoning people and I've managed to get past that through sheer determination. Originally I'd just stare at the phone like it had killer bees in the handset and try to think through every possible conversation path then freak out whenever i missed anything. Eventually I just resolved to pick up the phone and say whatever came to mind. The first, oh dozen times were disasters but after that I kind of got used to it and have the least difficulty with phones now out of everyone I know. There are two exceptions though. I hate answering machines, I just never know what to say to them. Also some automated systems now use voice recognition. I can only imagine this is a fresh kind of torture designed to replace thumbscrews.