How I feel when I leave my cellphone at home
r/picsu/damnshoes:
What if you need help for emergencies?
When was the last time you called emergencies? I’m thirty and I haven’t yet (knock on wood).
I’m on a six month run without a cell phone and it’s fucking great. I think most of the people here don’t know the sensation of dreading when your phone rings because the server went down or they need some work done immediately.
u/termites2:
I’ve owned a cell phone once, for about a month. I enjoyed playing with it for the first week, and only gave the number to a couple of people. The next week, more people started calling me. The third week, people started complaining to me that there were times I didn’t have my cell phone on me, and they wanted to call me. In the fourth week, I got rid of the thing.
My job does not require people to be in constant contact. Once I had a cell phone, however, suddenly I had to field loads of irrelevant and useless calls. They mostly seemed to be pointless confirmations of existing agreements, just serving as a kind of ‘ping’, rather than sharing data or new information.
Ah yes, people don’t realize how banal and useless is most cell phone communication.
Even in a job that requires to be in constant contact, people don’t realize written communication is better in many cases. They call you and start telling you they need such and such done. I stop them on their tracks and tell them to write me an e-mail, that way I can follow up on the specific points they’re making.
It’s only actually useful to convey emotion, so if I’m disappointed/happy with some work, I’ll pick up the phone and say it in person.