Be Excellent To Each Other

I'd love it if I could have my phone part of the N95 off, but still receive text messages. So I've got all the organisational benefits opf a phone, with none of the bullshit.

People call my mobile and I'm like "Hello, what?" and they're like "Hi" and I'm like "what?" and they are all like "What's going on?" and I'm all like "I am being interrupted from wanking or gaming or whatever, by a phone call. From a man. You faggot".

Why do people have phone conversations? There's no point. But you can't just have only texts on your phone. I wish I had an iphone, so I could just cut people off and when I see them next I can say "sorry, it's touch sensitive and it cut you off when I touched it".

Or, just a premium rate thing, whereby if someone phones it costs little, but once they have proven to be making a call with no real point, I can hit a key and they are charged a quid a minute, which appears on their bill without them knowing who made it happen. This would encourage people to not phone me up with no specific purpose in mind for the call.

You really are a sad little man....


Some people use phones as a conversation is easier than texting..... plus you don't have to answer you phone do you?

My Mum and a few of her relatives use one of these. They're all deaf so have no need for the voice part - in fact, you need to connect a headset to be able to make a call.

My w800 can do that. Just set it to reject all calls from non-whitelsted numbers then empty the whitelist.

Wow, I thought I was anti-social! Seriously though, just keep answering the phone like that an then no-one will ring you ever again!

I want one of those texty things... and I want Kovacs to get called by all the people who call me

I changed my mobile number at the weekend, then sent a message to everyone I want to know the new number to tell them to update their records.

That message went to thirteen people.

I am similar. I was sat in a room recently with every person who is ever likely to ring me on my personal mobile. There were 10 people.

Don't give your number out to muppets

Settings | Phone | Call Divert | Voice Calls | All Voice Calls | Activate

I have to say, I also hate using the phone. No idea why. I guess I'm just an anti-social little bastard.

The store manager we had for a while when I worked for Gamestation was very peculiar when it came to using the phone. If you called him, he'd be like "Yeah, what?" and made no attempt to hide the fact he was in a hurry to hang up. If he called you however, you'd be trapped on the phone to him for hours. You just couldn't shut the guy up.

One more for 'phone-hating' here. Face to face conversations I'm fine with, and the same for written - the phone is a shitty beast though.

what an odd group you are

imagine if we all HAD to make video calls, like in near future romp The Demolition Man. Aside from the breasts, imagine having to check your appearance before answering. And pulling a sicky would involve props and makeup!

Text/Email first then phone is my preference.

If you don't want to divert the calls as shown above, turn vibrate off and make your ring tone a silent mp3. That way you'll still hear message alerts.

I'd make sure my breasts were out of shot.

Errr...I couldn't do with that-I love talking on the phone (go.fig) plus my mum lives in Devon so the phone is handy-but like Grim...says get rid of the call factor and just stick with textuals then

I prefer to call, as I hate writing long emails.... texts are cool, send quite a few to the wifey, as we get unlimited texts

I'd send an awful lot of texts to your wife...

<fx: sound of door opening>

Ack....

<fade to black>

It's the fear of interrupting something important that gets to me. At times, it can get all very Curb-your-enthusiasm-esque, especially when trying to work out when the cut-offs are.

Ditto. And this is about the fifth time the forum has had a mass coming out of being phonephobes.

I used to work in Tech Support, for Time computers. 40,000 calls or so in eight months.

I've practically got a phobia of talking to people on the phone now.

when I get the movement back in my neck, I am soooo going to pummel you

With or without KY?

some else that used ot work at TIME..

I was pone of the monkeys down stairs that fixed the shite we were sending out

Add me to the list. I've worked on the website.

Do they still exist?

I always carry Vasaline, deep heat and vapour rub in my bag.... but that is another story

God yes, I still do occasional stuff for them. They're huge.

I'm also anti the phone. Used to be big on it as a teenager - though that's pre email and texting, of course - but have got worse and worse as I get older. More or less every time someone phones me I remember why, too - people phone you and only then begin to think. Or, worse, they phone and aren't thinking, so I answer "Hello, James McMe" and they say "Hi, is that James McMe?" Surely that's grounds for me to hang up straight away and them to call back when they can be bothered to not waste my time? I take the point that conversations should be quicker, but only when you're not talking to vacillating people who waste time - by the time they've established that yes, the person who answered and gave their name is the person who they wanted and asked how they are, I could have answered their question via email.

Nah, Time went bust after Tahir did a runner to Dubai taking his police cautions with him. I think they've tried to restart under a new name - all the stock mysteriously got transferred out of Time in the nick of (oh-ho) time - and then mysteriously got bought back again to be resold.

Hold on... Time Computers.. ex of Simonstone, Burnley?

*googles*

Fucking 'ell, thats pretty brazen of them.

I remember tham trying to give me a written warning, after they did not give me a verbal, because I took time off for a job interview.

They were such a bad bad company.. one of the mother boards used to have a 45% failure rate

edit: http://pcs.timecomputers.com/aboutus/2/ yes that is them

I joined them around the "yes, your Blue Lightning-equipped will run Doom" era, when they were selling machines that quite clearly wouldn't work. Not that it mattered, as the machines were going out of the door so damned fast it didn't matter if customers were pissed off and when they phoned up it was 50p/minute to try and get it to work. And I believe they virtually had their own office at Burnley Court for all the Trading Standards cases.

So when there's one of me, I'nm a sad little man, and when there's many of me, we are merely 'odd'?

I work with a few ex Time employees.

Not Leonard Nimoy though.

You sad little odd group of a man.

I'm not fond of talking on the phone, but can cope with it most of the time as long as I'm not in a shit mood.

Either way, aren't you due a visit dahn sarf soon?

Gosh, Time sound superevil. Thinking carefully, I remember a friend of the family's owning a Time machine. It broke quite quickly. Just like every other lousy, flimsy Time machine.



"I can only apologise."

As for me, I like talking to my family on the phone, and my out-of-town friends. Not long chats, and only a few times a week, but y'know, pleasant. I also don't get hassled by phone and the people who do call me are well versed in interesting and amusing conversational chitchat. Sometimes Maureen Lipman and Bob Hoskins come around to have a natter. It's all very cosy.

But yes, phone talking properly applied is very nice.

I'm not a huge fan of the phone. I prefer mobiles when i can call my friends because I know I'm calling the right number, but for some reason whenever using a normal phone, if I call up and have the right number I'll ask for the person, but if I call the wrong number for some reason by brain bypasses the sensible part and just starts flowing conversation... and then I go all red when I realise I've just given my life story to a taxi company.

I try to make Maria make all our official phonecalls, but she hates the phone for that kind of thing too (though she does like calling people in Ireland for aaaages).

Ho hum.

I like emails and texts though. And forums too, apparently.

Morris Day?

Perhaps it is, in fact, Vacuous Capri who is the odd, sad one here. Aaaaahhhh!!

Except I worked for Barclaycard, then CiS, then Lloyds (not a call center).

Don't think so.

Add me to the list of anti-social people who hate talking on the phone. For me it's a case of I hate having to give up some spare time to talk to someone about a bunch of nonsense - there's hardly anything truly important to ever say, and frankly 99% of things can be condensed into a single text, surely? The rest is just tedious blah, and you know, I'm not interested in how your day went or how so-and-so at work is really annoying.

I'm so anti-social.

Also, whenever someone finds it convenient for them to phone me, it's invariably inconvenient for me to answer.

I don't like 'antisocial' - we should reinvent ourselves as neosocial.

But... but... mum phoning... old buddy John phoning... these are good things? Right?

(Well, depending on your mum and your old buddy John, I guess.)

Take your point, but even then, what is there to say, really? Beyond, "Oh I'm fine thanks, how are you?"

I mean I hope that people I know are well and all, but I can't lie and say I'm especially interested in much of anything they have to say.

That sounds awful, reading it back!

'cept it was ntl customer support for me

edit: Wait i worked for time too! I was the poor sod tasked with selling those turkeys whe it tried to be The Computer World. Full-Time for 9k in 2002. I was a mug!