Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off : The Telecommunications Revolution Is Threatening to End Her Love Affair With the Phone
TAKE MY TELEPHONE--please. The love affair that began when I got a powder-blue Princess phone for my 16th birthday is on the rocks. After spending the happiest years of my life hand in hand with my receiver, blissfully gabbing with friends and, for that matter, strangers, I want to call the whole thing off. My phone and I are still living together, but it’s just not the same.
“You can’t live in L.A. and hate your phone,” says my friend Wendy, who is madly in love with hers. “That’s like living in New York and hating the bus.”
I really do want to save our relationship. But my phone won’t give me any space. Every time I turn around, I am urged to commit to yet another telecommunications breakthrough that promises to keep me perpetually plugged in--car phones, picture phones, mobile phones, fax machines, pocket pagers. When will someone sell me privacy ?
Still, I’m afraid to make a break. All our friends will side with my phone. “I can’t wait until they invent a wrist phone,” says Wendy, who is calling from her bathtub. “I don’t wear a watch, but I’d wear a phone. Just imagine--wherever I go, my number would go too. It might be a little annoying when I’m with people and I’m talking to my hand, but still I think it would be great.”
Sounds like hell to me. My phone used to be Mr. Nice Guy, but lately he’s developed a cruel streak. Once, I was gently invited to reach out and touch someone. Now, I’m threatened with warnings about what will happen to my life, my family and my career if I refuse to join the interconnection revolution.
I switch on the television. Two women executives are sipping white-wine spritzers. One is gloating over the other’s failure to get a big promotion because she chose an inferior office communications system. The gloater has the inner smile that comes with the right equipment. Even the Yellow Pages have become menacing and guilt-inducing. “I tried to let you know, but there was no answer,” says the pitch for call-forwarding thoughtfully repeated every few pages, along with equally shame- or fear-provoking plugs for three-way-calling, speed-dialing and call-waiting.
My once-obliging phone has become far too demanding. Guests arrive at my house for dinner and, instead of bringing flowers or wine, they are accompanied by a slew of forwarded phone calls. Just when it seems like old times and I’m having a heart-to-heart with a friend, the moment is spoiled by a call-waiting beep. “How are you?” has been officially replaced with “Can I put you on hold?”
But I shouldn’t be offended. “People just can’t stand unanswered questions,” explains Chaytor D. Mason, a USC associate professor of human factors, a field that deals with the psychological aspects of the work environment. When you know there’s a call waiting, “your interest and fear grow magnificently second by second,” Mason says. “No matter who you’re talking to, you’re going to put them on hold.” And is there a better caller on line No. 2? No, says Mason: “You invariably get a guy trying to sell you gold shares.”
I could use gold shares. My formerly humble telephone has developed expensive tastes. I long ago gave up trying to understand the luxuriant profusion of surcharges on my phone bill. And those costs don’t even include the phones.
Recently, my bedroom extension died. I went to the phone mart to buy an inexpensive red Trimline phone without a memory dialer, intercom, clock radio, answering machine or coffee maker. I would have had better luck finding a pair of tin cans with a string.
However, I did discover that for the right price (high!) I could own a work of telephone art: a football helmet, a cabin cruiser (complete with foghorn ringer), a grand piano, a pair of lips, a red spike-heeled shoe, a trout, Mickey Mouse, a dozing Garfield (who opens his eyes when you pick up the receiver) and Quacky, a mallard decoy.
“He’s one of our most popular models,” exclaimed the salesman. “Instead of ringing, he quacks.” If anything quacked at me at 7 in the morning, I’d shoot it. The salesman then tried to sell me on the virtues of a mobile phone: “You can make a call from the middle of a field.”
What am I supposed to say? “Hi, Mom, I’m in the middle of a field so I thought I’d give you a ring. Whoops, gotta go, the cow has to call her broker.” Still, “people are now willing to spend thousands of dollars to maintain a sense of control over the world,” says USC’s Mason. “As far as they’re concerned, the more information per second, the better.”
As far as I’m concerned, my phone is trying to change me into a control freak. And I’m not the only one who feels the pressure. Today, even gardeners have beepers. What kind of crisis do they need to respond to--a sudden aphid infestation? Mason explains: “A lot of people who aren’t anybody will buy a car phone or a beeper just to feel important. It’s the same sense of control people feel when they strap on a .38. They aren’t planning to kill anybody, but they feel more powerful.”
I refuse to get in a power struggle with my telephone. I opt for a temporary separation. I turn off my ringer and let my machine take my calls. And what do I miss? Not a three-picture deal at Columbia. An automatic voice trying to sell me aluminum siding. A heavy breather who leaves an obscene message. Three business associates I called months ago who now merrily announce that we are playing telephone tag. And a couple of calls from my friend Monica, who’s been too busy to get together for weeks.
Amazingly, she knocks on my door the following morning. “Why didn’t you call me back?” she wails. A thousand excuses cross my mind: I left town without my answering-machine remote control. Her line was busy, or, better still, there was no answer. I was in a dugout canoe going up the Amazon. Unfortunately, state-of-the-art phone technology negates all of these rationalizations.
“Maybe your machine is broken. Or you accidentally called my computer’s line,” suggests Monica, who wants to give me the benefit of the doubt.
I don’t deserve it. I deliberately broke the first commandment of our accessibility-obsessed society: Thou Shalt Not Miss a Call. “I had a fight with my telephone,” I confess.
“Sounds serious,” says Monica. “Why don’t we talk about it over lunch?”
We are halfway out the door when my phone rings. I lunge for the receiver like one of Pavlov’s dogs. “Wait a second,” I tell Monica. “I’ve got to take this call.”
