So, I was at poker night with coworkers this week (Texas Hold 'Em rocks, btw) and we wanted to order pizza, so someone had to call for delivery. But, at the guy's house where we were playing, Verizon doesn't get service, but AT&T mostly does. Long story short, we used the landline, which then brought up the cell v. land conversation and whatnot. So, a couple of things:
1. No cell phones. The guy who's house we were at: doesn't have a cell phone, at all. I guess it's a sign of my generation, but that sort of baffles me. I mean, I almost always have my phone on me and it's my only phone. Why bother with a land line, which has to stay at home? I guess there's some merit to not always being reachable...
2. Which brings me to: not answering the cell phone. Granted, sometimes you're in the shower or sleeping or out to dinner or at work or forgot to take it off vibrate or something and really can't answer, but I think everyone's guilty of screening calls, I mean, sometimes it's not convenient to talk, but where's the line between answering and saying "Hey, can I call you back?" and just letting it go to voicemail? One of the guys at the table was incensed that friends don't answer sometimes and I think he was more referring to inner-circle-type friends that you know they're screening the call for no good reason (like, you're supposed to meet up at a bar and they don't answer), and I think it's different if it's someone you don't talk to often and you know it'll be a long conversation and you want to wait until you can devote time to the chat. I dunno, maybe that makes me a jerk. So sometimes you let the call go to voicemail...
3. Which bothered one of the other players. He dislikes voicemail, apparently--he claimed to have a voicemail that he got either earlier that day or the day before that he wasn't going to listen to until the weekend. Perhaps I missed the backstory, but I found that odd. I almost always leave a voicemail (unless, like the example above, I'm supposed to, say, meet up with someone and the why of the call is implied). It's nice to know if the person is calling to chat or make plans for later in the week or if... I dunno, they need bail money. If I couldn't answer the phone, I'd like to have a sense of the level of emergency of calling back.
4. Ringing at work. This was a group of coworkers and there are a bunch of people in our office that a.) leave their ringers on during the work day and b.) have really loud/annoying ringtones, so we bitched about that for a bit. We work in an office--a cubicle and offices set-up that is rather quiet. I don't understand why you would need to leave the ringer on at work. Set it on vibrate: If you're at your desk, you'll hear it; if you're not at your desk, it won't be as bothersome to everyone else. That just seems like common courtesy to me, but again...it might be a function of my generation, since most of the people with loud and/or annoying rings are older.
5. Texting. Some are, well, sort of obsessed with it, some use it sometimes (like me), some seems diametrically opposed to it. I find texting useful if I'm at work or anywhere else where actually talking isn't an option, but I still want to communicate. I don't think I could use it as a primary method of communication; it's too unwieldy. But, it has it's uses.
