Day 100: ‘Speak up’

IS there nothing worse than hearing yourself leaving a voicemail?

Being married to someone who works on the wireless means I get no sympathy in this department. Mark knows what he sounds like on air, so he knows what he sounds like on a phone or a voicemail - and it doesn’t bother him.

I on the other hand can’t stand the sound of my own voice on my answer phone. So when I have to leave a message on someone else’s, I turn into a babbling mess.

I spend a lot of my working day on the phone, always have. I would rather pick up the phone, than send an email if I can get away with it. That, I have no problem with. 

But when I hear a voicemail message click in, I generally avoid leaving my weird sounding dulcet tones on their answer phone - nobody needs to hear that! For some reason when I do leave a message I stumble over my words, leave the wrong phone number, develop a momentary lisp, or even just say completely the wrong thing!

If I have this problem - someone who prefers a phone call over an email - how on earth does the new generation coming into the workplace cope? This is a generalisation of course, as I know a couple of great under-25s who never have a problem picking up the phone and talking to someone. 

But I have been in some workplaces, where young people will choose to email you, rather than walk across the office and have a conversation. They would rather have an hour’s worth of to-ing and fro-ing with emails than a five minute chat on the phone.

I’ve heard that some offices can go almost a whole morning without making a noise - no talking to each other, no phone calls. Nothing but the sound of keyboards tapping and mobiles beeping with text messages. 

With the younger generations being glued to texting, Facebook, Twitter, BBM, Whas app, Snapchat - and any other young cool things that I don’t know about - there’s almost no surprise that they’re far more comfortable with an electronic message than the spoken word.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over my voicemail phobia, but I hope one day there’ll be a line written in a job description: ‘Must be able to hold a phone conversation competently’.

Maybe using the phone should become part of the curriculum for sixteen-year-olds. Send them into the world with some real life skills please, before they become robotic typing machines, operating in silence, keeping everything to 140 characters!