Things that trigger me #2: 'Sorry I missed your call'

‘Talks about talks.’ It’s a particular phrase that sticks in my mind from my youth in a South Africa plotting its delicate transition from Apartheid to majority rule. ‘Talks about talks’ peppered so many SABC TV1 evening news broadcasts in the early nineties that the line will stay with me forever.

It may have been an accurate catch-all to describe the process of setting up negotiations for a move away from whites-only voting. And though my 10-year-old mates and I saw this odd tautology as a graphic illustration of grown-up silliness, perhaps it had its place when the issues at hand were avoiding political violence and how to redefine the institutions and processes of state for a functioning democracy.

But when the issue at hand is your average everyday chat, possibly a propos of nothing, ‘talks about talks’ is clearly nonsensical. A parody of laboured over-complication. And yet…we do it all the time.

Well, more accurately, other people do it all the time. To me. Specifically when it comes to smartphone communication. And it’s triggering me something silly these days.

Here’s what I’m on about. You call somebody using your mobile cellular phone. It’s not a cold call; this somebody who has your number saved. It might be for a quick exchange about whether they’re free next Thursday. It might be to ask whether you should pick up a beer for them on your way over, because you’ve spontaneously stopped in at the shop. Maybe the Northern Lights are flickering and you want to tell them to look out of the window. Perhaps you only wanted to say that you’re bleeding in the street outside their front door. Or maybe you need a friend’s voice to talk you down from a ledge. It could be anything, but the point is this: they don’t pick up.

What you then get, instead of a call back at their earliest convenience, is a text message.

Sorry I missed you. I was pushing the pram/cooking breakfast/pruning the chrysanthemums/answering the doorbell/in the bath/in the cupboard/on another call.

That may be the end of it. Or perhaps there’s a little extra:

What’s up?/How can I help?/Was there anything in particular?

Or here’s another charming one:

When are you free to chat?

See what’s happened here? Instead of making the talk happen by calling back, we’re now into the realm of ‘talks about talks’.

Why not, instead of making a substantial mountain out of a pretty modest molehill, and for the love of all the goats in Albania, just call back?  

I know people mean well, but I have to ask: is ringing back not a thing anymore? Do people see it as a twisted relic of a quaint time when all we had were landlines, and the only thing you could do with a missed call was return it? Did I miss a memo whilst I was getting middle-aged?

This thing of texting back to a call makes me wonder if we’re the intelligent species we’re puffed up to be. It’s making the simple complicated. Alexa owners have already worked out that this business of typing every little thing is a slap in the face of what humans evolved to do most efficiently in terms of communication, which is use our tongues to talk.  

But the Return of Speech seems to have skipped merrily past the texter-backers. Who seem fine with the fact that instead of proceeding to the conversation, we’re now having a written discussion about the contents, agenda or appointment for the mooted conversation. You’re now being asked to waste your time typing up – no fun for those of us with fat fingers, or gloves on, or driving, or whose predictive text won’t switch off, or whose arms are full of shopping, or dealing with jumbled thoughts that don’t lend themselves to tiny messages, or wanting to focus on the Northern Lights, or caught up in some terrible emergency – a detailed proposal of the topic up for discussion. And on some level, it seems, to justify that proposal. And/or to consult your diary. For pity’s sake!  

When this happens, and I’m on the receiving end of it, I’m not buying you that beer. You will go thirsty.

A few points tumble into my mind at moments like this, generally bubbling up into a kind of angry trigger stew:

• It’s okay to miss a call. I expect you to have a life, or for your hands to be occupied on occasion. Happens to me all the time. No need to apologise.
• ‘Sorry to miss you’ makes it sound like the phone ringing was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for that chat, and if only the timing had been better then we wouldn’t have to live with such regret. Big reveal: there’s a marvellous invention that allows you to hit a green button and call back.
• I don’t need to know what important thing you were doing that caused you to miss the call. What I need – the call was the giveaway here – is to speak to you.
• If you’re really busy, it’s okay to call back and say you’re busy! It’s okay to say you only have a minute! And hey, it’s even okay to make a time to chat at length, should that be necessary (which it may very well not). But speaking all this is actually faster than typing it. It’s also good to make sure the person isn’t up on some ledge, aching to hear a human voice that cares. Otherwise, how are you going to feel if they jump?
• Just because we all started doing scheduled Zoom calls during the pandemic, which made calls seem like a big deal, doesn’t mean all calls have to be scheduled big deals.
• Most phone calls are not ‘re.’ the next United Nations Security Council meeting. They do not require a written agenda. Really, they don’t. Let’s get over ourselves.
• When I was growing up, you had to think about the cost of the phone call. Overseas? Better start saving! Now, the vast majority of us can ring anywhere in the world for free via web apps. We should be talking more, not less.
• There is some reason why I chose to call rather than write. It’s nice not to have that thrown in one's face or questioned.
• Being asked to state your business feels a lot like the old ‘what is it in connection with?’ churned out by gatekeepers in the working world. It’s quite hurtful when friends, loved ones or even acquaintances give you the same line reserved for cold-calling salespeople.

What makes the stew hotter is that some of the worst offenders seem to be lifelong friends, guys to whom I’ve been best man at their weddings or people who unquestioningly open their homes to me for weeks on end. Even, ahem, girlfriends and the like.

I find it odd that you would share a bed with someone on a regular basis or fly around the world to visit them, but think nothing of refusing to return their calls. I suppose the assumption is that you’re after a good old chinwag that might get out of hand on a busy day. That it can wait till whenever. But why assume when you can ask? And isn’t five minutes better than nothing?

There are a couple of questions that routinely come buzzing into my stew:

• Do we ask people to provide the expected minutes of a conversation when we meet them in real life? Or do we just have the conversation?
• If we’re too busy and important to pick up the phone, why do we then have time to write twenty texts back and forth about possibly doing so?

Just me?

So, the scenario above – with the angry stew included every time – happens to me a lot. What I’d like to know is:

• Is it just me getting constantly roped into ‘talks about talks’? Or does it feature in your life too?
• Is it just me who gets annoyed by it, and spends the rest of the day refusing to look at my phone because the mere sight of my messages gets my blood pressure up?
• In the days of landlines in hallways, you went to the phone and answered it. And life went on just fine. Have smartphone call records and caller ID now made us all feel like terribly important people and created little gatekeepers inside our heads?

Also, if this is a thing, is it just a ‘western culture’ thing? After all, I’ve been to places in the world (Asia, Africa, rural Austria…) where they’re smart enough to realise that a 10-second conversation is more efficient than standing around (probably making the people you’re with feel spare…) typing tiny, easy-to-misinterpret notes to each other, and then waiting for replies. That picking up doesn’t have to mean doing a bunch of small talk. And maybe even that a call is a little dose of the human connection our technologically enlightened world is doing its best to wrench away from us.

I’m keen to hear your experience on all of this: call me and tell me about it! And if I miss the call, I’ll simply ring you back…*

*As long as I speak your language and you’re using WhatsApp or something else that’s free.

Would you like to read an entire book of me complaining? Then give Never Drive a Hatchback to Austria a try here.