<p>I don’t like the phone. I was an intern in the Senate so I got over it-.a few thousand people screaming at you will do that. Still don’t like the phone but at least I can order pizza now. Couldn’t do it when I was younger.</p>
<p>Totally agree that having good phone skills is still important, though it seems to be a slowly dying skill. I enjoy chatting with friends, but I agree that the phone can be intrusive and its easier to check email, facebook messages or texts to coordinate plans, etc. I “chat” with my younger s on fb chat sometimes. He never answers his phone or checks voicemail. Its aggravating! But that said, also aggravating at times are ridiculously long-winded messages on an answering machine that go on and on as if the person leaving the message was having a conversation with the answering machine!</p>
<p>Yes, it is personal preferences, I definitely want to enjoy outdoors, be very connected to my current surroundings and people around me at the moment. I see that people are not enjoying a current moment, surroundings and current company around them, they are disconnected from all of these because they are constantly connected to outside world. It seems to me defeating original purpose. I like to live in a moment, I want to see a beautiful flower and an awesome design that clouds form, I want to listen to people who are around me right now. Spending 8 hours / day at the office, going to services every weekend provides me more than enough with “social” life, i really do not need any more. Do not underestimate human need to be alone for sometime, to think thru what is going on, to sort things out, let your brain to wonder. People who do not allow themselves this experience must be under huge stress, although as I said before, I have no idea what stress is, so I am not a valid judge on stress.</p>
<p>Apologies, Miami, but that post above doesn’t make sense to me. If a person is outdoors enjoying nature or enjoying the company around them, then they are connected to the outside world. What I find uncomfortable is when I am with friends on a walk or hike or out for a meal and they answer their cellphone for some non-urgent issue. I can understand if a matter is urgent and requires a person to take the call, but otherwise I find it a bit offensive, and I would not do that to someone else, or would apologize profusely if I had to take the call.</p>
<p>Sure everyone benefits from some quiet, alone time, but interacting with others for pleasure/socialization is a positive thing and is quite enjoyable. Best to look at things from the positive, not constantly from the negative perspective.</p>
<p>I text and email constantly. Most of the folks I work with are scattered across the country and are often teleworking. Also much of the time, I’m doing volunteer stuff past the time that I think it is appropriate to call people at home (9 or 9:30) so emailing is more efficient.</p>
<p>I do find phone calls to be more intrusive because it requires me to act right then and the </p>
<p>That being said, there will be a period of time that I spend hours on the phone doing coach recruitment.</p>
<p>My family member with the phone issues has had them for quite some time, well before texting & email. This individual is very comfortable with texting & email, which can be edited & reviewed before sending.</p>
<p>I have longstanding issues about placing phone calls (and a true HORROR of ringing doorbells), and email/text/internet message forum communication is a Godsend to me. </p>
<p>I find that there are times when asynchronous communication can impede progress, and it’s necessary to pick up the phone. But, generally, I’ll start with text or email.</p>
<p>I note, however, that making a business phone call (to order a pizza, schedule a haircut, inquire about availability of a product, etc) is substantially easier for me than making a personal phone call. It is the awkwardness of entering a conversation with pleasantries, moving on to the purpose of the call, meandering out via additional pleasantries, etc., that I find particularly stressful. </p>
<p>Furthermore, I find the “handle this right now, even if you were in the middle of something” nature of phone calls to be problematic for me both at home and at work. If my job were to sit by the phone answering customer’s questions, one right after the other, I don’t think I’d find it problematic. But it’s not. I have a job that involves reading, thinking, and writing about various topics, and if someone is asking me a question, it’s almost never on the topic I’m thinking about at that precise moment. I’d prefer to receive the question, take the time to research the answer at my convenience (it’s usually promptly, but rarely right at that moment, interrupting my train of thought, as a phone call requires), and provide the answer to be read at the other person’s convenience.</p>
<p>Knowing that’s how I feel about phone calls–that they feel like interruptions–I feel that much more inhibited about placing them. Unless, as noted, I’m placing the type of call where the person at the other end has the specific job of answering phone calls and taking orders, appointments, etc.</p>
<p>There are other things about phone calls I don’t care for. I don’t even like to be around other people who are talking on the phone, because they are in your space and making noise, but they are not actually present. They are mentally elsewhere. I enjoy interacting with other people very much. In person, in email, online, etc. I just don’t care for the phone.</p>
<p>"I don’t even like to be around other people who are talking on the phone, because they are in your space and making noise, but they are not actually present. They are mentally elsewhere. "
-Exactly. what is the point of being with somebody if you plan to carry your phone and potentially being on the phone. However, I feel the same about texting. Being with somebody involves being with this person mentally, not only physically present around.</p>
<p>I saw this with my youngest kid: a strong aversion to calling people and addressing issues head-on. My oldest not only had no problem with it, but organized a project that involved calling every independent movie theater in the US and talking to them about programming. That has helped her a lot in the brutal world that is Hollywood. You learn to make difficult phone calls and to have difficult conversations with difficult people. </p>
<p>So I pushed my youngest to call people. She’s still learning, but she’s become much better at it and - though it’s tough to separate cause from correlation - it seems that has helped her in meetings.</p>
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<p>Me too. I have reservations about Facebook, but it’s the way - and probably the only way - to stay in touch with nieces and nephews. DH and I will likely be taking up text messaging - something we’ve avoided until now - when DD goes off to college, in order to connect with her. Like most of her generation, as observed by many on this thread, she’s never been much of a phone talker, but she texts readily.</p>
<p>I love talking on the phone to people I want to talk to, which is why I love our new phone that announces who is calling and I do not have to get up unless I want to.</p>
<p>I have one child who talks on the phone and one who texts. The texter is the more gregarious of the two. Go figure.</p>
<p>The advent of email and texting has certainly helped me; I don’t like speaking on the phone whether for business or pleasure…I would prefer face to face or email. My D on the other hand picks up the phone at the drop of a hat. I think it’s a personality trait and not a generational thing.</p>
<p>I don’t like talking on the phone because the reception is so bad it is awkward to hear, understand, and be heard on the cell phone. Our magic jack is at times, just as bad. We have no landline, but I do recall with fondness how clear and simple it used to be to speak to another person on the phone. Is this an issue with other people? It is much less fun talking to someone on the phone when the call is breaking up and gets dropped.</p>
<p>I wonder for those of us in our 50’s if our hearing is not so acute and this makes phone calls unnerving?</p>
<p>NJres-
Absolutely have the same issue with lousy cellphone reception, particularly in my garage and kitchen, which is why we cannot give up our landline. Both are AT&T, so maybe its a conspiracy. Or just lousy service 
We have given up long distance on the landline though. Use cellphone exclusively for that.</p>
<p>I wasn’t going to respond to this thread, since as someone with AS this kind of problem is par the course, but I am surprised so many apparently neurotypical people have this problem as well.</p>
<p>For me, it’s gotten a lot better. When I was growing up I used the phone socially all the time as I didn’t have a cell phone and the constant connection to a computer wasn’t as prevalent. That wasn’t an issue. But calling to order food or schedule a doctors appointment was hard. When you make a phone call you know intuitively what you need to say, and you WILL know intuitively how to respond, or how to handle if you don’t know how to respond. As someone with AS, I won’t. I have to use intellect to compensate for the lack of intuition, which can be difficult to do on the fly and as a child and younger adult this was a source of extreme anxiety. It’s like going into a test without knowing what subject the test is on, what any of the questions will be, or having any time to prepare-- you MIGHT just so happen to know the answers, or you might fail and make an idiot of yourself in front of the other person on the phone, who did have time to prepare and can’t comprehend how you could have so much trouble with something so simple. That’s kind of scary. It’s also harder for me to hear over the phone, I have to concentrate really hard to process what I am hearing and that can distract me from remembering what I need to say.</p>
<p>My mother helped me by helping me to get a basic script down before I would make these calls-- you can’t predict everything but just to give me an idea so I wouldn’t panic. Now I can make whatever calls I need to make, though there is still a pang of anxiety and I do still mentally script the conversation before I call. I just had to call someone for work that I’ve never called before to discuss a problem I didn’t entirely understand, and my colleague/friend gave me an idea of what to say-- if she hadn’t been there I’d have done it myself but might have said something weird and sounded a little silly, or had trouble explaining myself, but I am used to that and don’t get very embarrassed anymore.</p>
<p>For your kids who have this problem, doing a little scripting or roleplaying in advance could help. It’s not hard to transfer that skill to something you do mentally yourself for a second before you make a call. I was a phone canvasser once for a political organization (yes, seriously) and just forcing myself to do it over and over again didn’t help with the anxiety until I developed this other coping skill.</p>
<p>ETA: And I think most of the kids (and PARENTS because it’s certainly not just the kids) who come here looking for answers they could have gotten from a simple phone call are more likely lazy than afraid. And maybe unsure of who they need to call. Between the registrar, the admisions office, various counselors, etc and so forth, it can be difficult to tell who is applicable to the question you want to ask. Having a CC member say “you need to contact the registrar at your college” is still an answer.</p>
<p>DW and I came to an agreement many many years ago - she makes the phone calls, and I kill the spiders. It works out well for both of us. 
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<p>I do sometimes help “script” a call for a kid when they have to make a call but aren’t really sure how to efficiently ask what they need to ask in order to cut through the noise, and to help them figure out what they need to ask. They are getting better, and are not as phone-phobic as me.</p>
<p>As for asking stuff on a forum that literally 10 seconds of googling or searching on a web site would have given the answer - some is not understanding how to do searches (a skill everyone needs to figure out), mostly it is laziness. </p>
<p>For really extreme cases of laziness, there is [Let</a> Me Google That For You](<a href=“http://www.lmgtfy.com%5DLet”>http://www.lmgtfy.com) . Sometimes that gets the point across.</p>
<p>I really don’t like talking on the phone, except with close friends or family members…I can talk to them for long periods of time. It’s much easier for me to text so I can think about exactly what I want to say…on the phone I often get anxious about not knowing what I should say next.</p>
<p>I don’t mind talking to people in person, though, for customer service or anything else. I’d much rather be able to see someone’s facial expressions and body language so I know exactly what’s going on. Or I’ll email, like others have said, so that I can have documentation. I did this a lot with my University…if it was a question that I needed to be sure would still have the same answer 6 months from now, I would email the office and save the response until the problem/concerned was handled.</p>
<p>For some reason I hate making appointments or calling businesses the most. It just stresses me out; it’s always been that way and I have no idea why. And I REALLY for whatever reason don’t like to Skype–again, unless it’s with a close friend or family member.</p>
<p>Both of my S’s far prefer texting to talking on the phone. They disdain email too. The oldest(age 25 lives/works in another state)) calls me once every couple of weeks…maybe out of some sense of obligation to the old parents. </p>
<p>Once we get past “hello” he seems to run out of things to talk about. Then I have to carry the conversation. It’s very odd because he is a “life of the party” kind of guy who earned the dubious honor of “most talkative” during his school years.</p>
<p>Lucky for my kids, I am a journalism major, so they do not have to think of things to say. They can call and I will interview them.</p>