h/t Instapundit to Ann Althouse - Yes, I've noticed this trend where people increasingly don't talk on the phone. I'm cell only for the last couple of years. When I don't want to stop to have to take a call, I turn it off - or push it to voice-mail. But I enjoy talking on the phone when I can and have the time.
It's incredibly more rich than email, or texting - both of which I also do. Not only are people getting silly about it, this NYT's article is so pathetically self-centered, I couldn't imagine wanting to talk to this person. What could they possibly have to say that wasn't about them? Phone calls can come at a bad time. When they do, I either don't take them, or briefly explain. But to the extent one views them as "rude" when from friends or associates, as opposed to salespeople, what you may be gauging is how pre-occupied you are with yourself.
“I remember when I was growing up, the rule was, ‘Don’t call anyone after 10 p.m.,’ ” Mr. Adler said. “Now the rule is, ‘Don’t call anyone. Ever.’ ”
Phone calls are rude. Intrusive. Awkward. “Thank you for noticing something that millions of people have failed to notice since the invention of the telephone until just now,” Judith Martin, a k a Miss Manners, said by way of opening our phone conversation. “I’ve been hammering away at this for decades. The telephone has a very rude propensity to interrupt people.”
Though the beast has been somewhat tamed by voice mail and caller ID, the phone caller still insists, Ms. Martin explained, “that we should drop whatever we’re doing and listen to me.”
Even at work, where people once managed to look busy by wearing a headset or constantly parrying calls back and forth via a harried assistant, the offices are silent. The reasons are multifold. Nobody has assistants anymore to handle telecommunications. And in today’s nearly door-free workplaces, unless everyone is on the phone, calls are disruptive and, in a tight warren of cubicles, distressingly public. Does anyone want to hear me detail to the dentist the havoc six-year molars have wreaked on my daughter?