Wrong Numbers are Never Engaged.

If you don’t believe me then pick ten random numbers from a phone book and try it for yourself!

I don’t like phones, despite the fact I now have four in my life, work mobile, personal mobile, home phone and work desk phone, I don’t think they add anything to my life; instead I think they make it worse.

My home phone isn’t plugged in, it (and the line) are there for external calls because it’s cheaper to pay for the calls and the line than it would be for making the same calls via a mobile. Now on to my personal mobile, I have this with me most of the time but it comes with a lovely feature called vibrate (and not in that way…). My friends can call me when ever and if I’m asleep or busy I can ignore it without disturbing anyone else. And then easily see who I missed.

My work phone is a Treo phone/PDA combination and, while being quite bulky, has a permanent GPRS Internet connection. It’s great to have (the company pay for the calls ;)), it lets me have Net (and by extension SSH and Terminal Services) access from almost anywhere and has a killer feature, almost no one has the number for it!.

And now on the phone that drives me nuts, my desk phone in the office. It rings when someone tries to call me. Considering most of my work is mental and requires at least a little concentration this is a bigger annoyance than you may think. But not only that, it rings when someone calls ANYONE ELSE in the company and they either don’t answer or they have busy lines.

When you actually think about it phones are amazingly rude, they sit there and make noise until you pay them immediate attention. If you ignore it then you either drive other people nuts or you get a little ‘chat’ on why professionalism requires you to answer your phone. Note for the world: first person to raise this issue with me will never dance again.

So if phones are inventions of the devil what’s the solution? For me it’s email. It’s non-intrusive, it gives you an audit trail (never underestimate this one!) and you can respond to them with the attention they deserve, when your schedule permits. Phones… BAH!