Those Who Make Every Second Count Are Never Out of Touch : Growing Number of Americans Adopting an On-Call Relationship With Job, Families

While others agonize over problems at work or home, Michael L. Tenzer uses his connections to get things done.

But Tenzer doesn’t pull strings or cords. He pushes buttons. Lots and lots of buttons.

In addition to cellular phones in both of his cars, the 58-year-old businessman owns a portable fax machine that he’s rarely without, a paging unit and an answering machine. Not too surprisingly, his phones all come equipped with call waiting, call forwarding and conference calling capabilities.

Even when yachting or vacationing in Europe, Tenzer makes it a point to stay in touch. Whether at sea, on a plane or in a rental car, he almost always has access to a phone or fax.

“Communication is an integral part of business,” said Tenzer, chairman and chief executive officer of Leisure Technology Inc., a West Los Angeles firm that develops retirement communities and single-family homes. “It’s critical to be in touch and be available at a moment’s notice.”

Obsessed With Efficiency

Tenzer is hooked on staying in touch. And he is not alone. In a nation obsessed with efficiency, a growing number of people are adopting an on-call relationship with their work and families. According to industry associations, 7.4 million Americans use paging units, which work through radio transmitters and are activated by dialing a phone number; 2 million have voice mail, which uses a central computer to answer calls and take messages even in remote locations, and 1.6 million own or rent a cellular phone. The latter, powered by a car battery or portable battery pack, allows callers to send and receive messages using radio transmitters in the area.

It’s a phenomenon that continues to grow. By 2000, 5% of the public is expected to use these technologies, said Cliff Bean, a telecommunications specialist at Arthur D. Little Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., firm that analyzes and forecasts industry trends. Already, the equipment is being used by executives, ranchers, medical professionals, members of the clergy, political lobbyists, repair personnel, even baby-sitters.

Said Mary Hawkins, general manager of Metromedia Paging Services in Anaheim, among the nation’s largest “beeper” companies: “People have gone from being managed by these technologies to managing them. Many have discovered that it gives them a big edge.”

These days, technologies range from simple tone beepers that sell for as little as $35 to units that display 400-word messages and cost as much as of $250. Also available: pocket-size machines that transmit brief voice messages; systems that can receive messages on the opposite side of the country using satellites and FM radio waves; and, for those ready to step into the cellular arena, a dizzying array of equipment starting at $400.

Reliance on Devices

Not surprisingly, many who use these devices quickly develop a strong reliance on them. A few years ago, for example, en route to the Sierra Nevada, a vacationing Robin MacGillivray panicked when her car phone suddenly passed out of cellular range. Unable to pick up the signal again, “I made my husband drive down the mountain to a gas station so I could use a phone booth. It was a frightening moment,” she said. “It never occurred to me I could be out of touch.”

So what does the drive to be constantly plugged in say about us?

Dr. Alfred Coodley, a USC professor of psychiatry, says the proliferation and popularity of communication devices means: “We are a society that is far more time- and function-oriented than 25 years ago. We have become preoccupied with making ourselves efficient every second of the day.”

A few individuals may become compulsive about staying in touch, “driven by fear of winding up the low man on the totem pole,” he said. “But for the person who is confident and well-prepared, these can be very useful tools for staying organized.”

Harolyn Crandall agrees. A vice president of corporate sales for Burbank-based World Title Co., she spends several hours a day in her car, traveling from one real estate site to another, and uses a mobile phone and beeper to stay in touch with her office and clients.

“There are so many times you can’t get through to the person you need to talk to, and that’s really frustrating,” she said. “I figured the best way to deal with the situation was to get a mobile phone. One that I could carry with me all the time.”

Now Crandall rarely leaves home without it. She carries the small 4-pound unit in a large handbag--along with a spare battery pack that provides an additional four hours of operating time. The unit can also be recharged by plugging it into the car, where she spends at least two hours a day on the phone.

Altogether Crandall says she handles “several hundred” calls a month and tallies a phone bill of at least $500 on the mobile unit alone. “There are days when it starts ringing as soon as I start driving.” On occasion, she’s even used the phone while walking along the street. “People sometimes look at you like you’re crazy, but it has never bothered me.”

Her routine has a familiar ring to Jim Agate, a sales representative at George Rice & Sons printing company in Los Angeles. He, too, carries a mobile phone, as well as a paging unit, and is beeped frequently--about 20 times a day. Sometimes the calls come in the middle of the night, he said, when thousands of dollars are riding on what might be an incorrect press run.

Having to Go In

Usually he is able to deal with the problem by calling in and answering a question or two. But on the average of twice a week, “I wind up having to go in, sometimes at 4 o’clock in the morning. You don’t think about it, you just do it.”

Indeed, life on call can mean a legacy of half-viewed movies and unfinished meals. Andi Sporkin, who handles media relations and publicity for KCBS television, found herself getting more exercise than some of the players at a baseball game last summer. Because her pager sounded half-a-dozen times during the game, Sporkin said she wound up watching only one uninterrupted inning.

More accustomed to such interruptions is David Abrams, an internist and kidney specialist who works out of Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys. He has carried a pager for 14 years and has learned the hard way that it’s better to take a separate car whenever traveling with his wife and children. “I don’t become a hermit on the days I am on call, but I also don’t want to ruin a Dodger game or a dinner for them,” he said.

Abrams, who’s usually paged 15 to 20 times a day, admits the sound of a beeper can sometimes be maddening. “You know you’re not going to get any frivolous calls in the middle of the night, but that doesn’t mean you don’t occasionally feel a flash of anger and resentment. You never get used to waking up at 2, 3, 4 o’clock in the morning.”

To minimize such problems, he and the other doctors in his practice take turns carrying the paging unit. Nobody keeps it for more than two days consecutively.

MacGillivray, district manager of operations for Pacific Bell, oversees 600 employees and is responsible for keeping phones operating in a large portion of the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys. She fields as many as 100 calls a day with a mobile phone, a cellular phone in her car, a paging unit, voice mail and an answering machine in her home. She will even take the mobile phone with her when she rides in cars not equipped with a cellular phone. And when visiting friends in the evening, she programs her phones to ring there.

‘A Terrific Tool’

“At first it was overwhelming, but you get used to it,” she said. “Most people think it’s something that’s constantly on your mind, that it’s like a weight you carry with you. I look at it as a terrific tool.”

But not everyone shares her enthusiasm. Some, like Abrams, find it can be difficult to relax when anticipating a call. “It’s a constant reminder I am responsible for something other than what I’m doing at that moment. When I am carrying a pager, there’s no way I can sit there and enjoy myself knowing that I might be interrupted at any second.”

Certainly, a good deal of responsibility comes with the technology. Those on call must constantly remember to keep fresh batteries in the pager or mobile phone and stay within operating range. They can ill afford to let the equipment out of sight, for fear that it could be lost or stolen--or that they might miss an important message.

Then there’s the challenge of making sure everything is properly programmed. And, finally, the somewhat onerous task of calling everyone back. With all the technology, the usual excuses simply don’t work.

Even so, there are some fringe benefits to being wired to work. As Abrams put it: “You’re never disappointed when the beeper goes off in the middle of a boring party or when you are in the middle of something you don’t want to do. That’s when you really appreciate it.”