Oh, how I long for those days when you picked up the phone and waited for the operator to ask, �Number, please?� Life was so simple. You could even say �Long distance� and give a number to another polite woman!
We thought an answering machine was a marvelous invention in later years. It kept us from talking to people we didn�t want to talk to! Never mind that the sound might be garbled; we could usually pick out enough words to get the jest of the message.
Ma Bell or an offspring should be strangled with a phone cord (it is always tangled anyway) for allowing those automators to install the dreaded Press 1, Press 2, Press 3 systems on company phone lines. I have no appetite for the menus presented! I want a live person to answer my question. I do not relish waiting for the �next available clerk, agent, representative, associate, or malingerer.�
When the �next available person� gives me a recording and asks me to leave my name and number and the call will be returned, I go bonkers! Next available has become UNAVAILABLE.
As for phone manners, how many enjoy the guessing game of trying to figure out to whom they are speaking when the caller gives no clue? I say, �Oh, my Caller ID doesn�t seem to be working (actually I don�t have it), who IS this?� And the long winded friends who call and finally give an excuse as to why they need to get off the line? Did they forget that THEY were the ones who started the whole thing?
�Call waiting� is another sore spot. I detest being told that someone is more important than I and that I will be put on hold! Not this person. I simply hang up. Call me back if what you had to say was so important.
I believe that human anatomy will evolve and one ear will have a cartilage extension to hold a cell phone so that the owner can have both hands free while he or she drives, shops, uses a laptop, and performs bodily functions. I�ve seen it all, but the cell phone person has developed a permanent head tilt and shoulder hunch.