I grew up with rotary telephones and thought touch-tone telephones were just amazing technology. And growing up, I was taught that if the telephone rang, you answered it. It could be an important call.
And so when the telephone rang, I would run across the house to go and answer the phone. I would watch mom and dad stop whatever they were doing to go and answer the phone. When telemarketers started their evil campaigns, that made my family hesitate, but we still answered the phone.
And then, being polite, we were taught to answer questions. And telemarketers would talk to us for quite a long time, trying to get us to say yes to whatever they were pushing. I remember getting my first mobile phone because my wife was pregnant and I was on a detail in Washington DC and my wife got a mobile phone and we got it in case she went into labor and she needed to get a hold of me and let me know that I needed to come home.
We've had mobile phones ever since then. I did email on my mobile phone when it was just a text web and it was the tiny screen and all the letters had to be typed using the number keypad. As my career progressed, mobile phones became ubiquitous and I was told that if work called I had to answer.
Sometimes it was an overtime request, sometimes it was an emergency and we need you to come in right now. When I became a manager it became more important to be reachable. So I spent the majority of my life on a hair trigger waiting for the telephone to ring or buzz or sing or whatever.
Since I retired I have embraced the millennial attitude about a ringing phone. My initial reaction is, who's calling me and why, and why didn't they text me first? I hate that because I was so against it for so long, but now that I don't have any of those pressures on me to answer the phone, it's awesome.
And I really enjoy just letting it go to voicemail and then I'll read the generated text transcription and decide if I'm even gonna listen to the voicemail soon or not. I still answer the phone for close family, and I do my best to always answer the phone for my wife.
But not answering the phone is new for me. Fun!
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