(no subject)
Call Waiting Sucks
by: Michael Hess
How would you feel in this following scenario? Suppose you are having a face to face conversation with someone, and someone else comes up and horns in on your conversation. He starts talking to the person who you were talking with, without asking your permission, and the person you are talking with says to you "give me just a minute with this guy," and then spends 20 minutes with the interruptor while you stand there.
My call waiting experiences are often the electronic equivalent of this scene. I'm going to go on a short rant, but it has been brewing for a while. I do not have call waiting on my home phone. I do have call waiting on my cell phone, and I've probably been guilty of the following behavior once in a while myself, so I do not exonerate myself from my own wrath. However, I find it singularly inappropriate and sometimes rude how people use call waiting on their private line.
Of course, putting people on hold has been a tool for businesses and the bane of callers for some time. We all know how frustrating it can be when we are put on hold, especially when we are trying to conduct some business and we are in a hurry.
So why is it that we do the same thing to our friends?
At least when I call my doctor or dentist and they put me on hold, I know that I am on hold because either a) a person called ahead of me and they are finishing up with them or b) there is an emergency going on and they will get to me after it is over.
Of course, not always are things this easy, but as a general rule, businesses usually take care of the first person who calls, whether it is a small local business or a large faceless corporation -- many times their message as you're holding is something on the order of "your call will be answered in the order in which it was received."
However, us private citizens have it backwards. Often, when I call someone who has call waiting, and I'm talking to them, they will suddenly say "Oh, can you hold on a minute?" I usually say "Sure." I am then parked in electronic limbo, while that person then spends 10 or 15 minutes talking to whomever called on the other line. It doesn't matter that I called first. It doesn't matter that I may take offense to waiting on the line for that long. In the backwards reality of private home usage, I must wait while the second caller gets an uninterrupted phone call. Occasionally, if the call is going to go on for longer, the person might say "Oh, can I call you back? Mike's been sitting on the other line." However, by this time I have most likely been gnashing my teeth in fury, and maybe I have even hung up.
Why do we do this to people, especially our friends? It used to be that if a person called, they would get a busy signal if the person they were calling was on the other line. The busy signal meant, for the second caller, that the person they were calling was busy and that they should wait a little while and call back when the person was, hopefully, free.
I know that call waiting is important in some ways. In the old days, the only way that a caller could notify a person of an emergency if the person they were calling was already on the phone was to have an operator break into the call, terminating the first call and connecting the second caller. Today, if there is an emergency, call waiting can make it possible for the emergency to be communicated quickly without an extra step.
Or if the caller is expecting an important phone call...perhaps Ed McMahon is going to call with news that they've won the sweepstakes...they can get that information quickly.
But when we get down to just everyday conversations, why should I, who called first, have my phone call interrupted and my status pushed down to second priority just because the person I've called has gotten indication that a second caller is trying to reach him/her? Why should I be able to break off someone else's conversation simply because I called second? This is wrong. It is discourteous to me, or to whomever was talking first, to break off the conversation and leave him or her in electronic limbo for 10 or 15 minutes.
by: Michael Hess
How would you feel in this following scenario? Suppose you are having a face to face conversation with someone, and someone else comes up and horns in on your conversation. He starts talking to the person who you were talking with, without asking your permission, and the person you are talking with says to you "give me just a minute with this guy," and then spends 20 minutes with the interruptor while you stand there.
My call waiting experiences are often the electronic equivalent of this scene. I'm going to go on a short rant, but it has been brewing for a while. I do not have call waiting on my home phone. I do have call waiting on my cell phone, and I've probably been guilty of the following behavior once in a while myself, so I do not exonerate myself from my own wrath. However, I find it singularly inappropriate and sometimes rude how people use call waiting on their private line.
Of course, putting people on hold has been a tool for businesses and the bane of callers for some time. We all know how frustrating it can be when we are put on hold, especially when we are trying to conduct some business and we are in a hurry.
So why is it that we do the same thing to our friends?
At least when I call my doctor or dentist and they put me on hold, I know that I am on hold because either a) a person called ahead of me and they are finishing up with them or b) there is an emergency going on and they will get to me after it is over.
Of course, not always are things this easy, but as a general rule, businesses usually take care of the first person who calls, whether it is a small local business or a large faceless corporation -- many times their message as you're holding is something on the order of "your call will be answered in the order in which it was received."
However, us private citizens have it backwards. Often, when I call someone who has call waiting, and I'm talking to them, they will suddenly say "Oh, can you hold on a minute?" I usually say "Sure." I am then parked in electronic limbo, while that person then spends 10 or 15 minutes talking to whomever called on the other line. It doesn't matter that I called first. It doesn't matter that I may take offense to waiting on the line for that long. In the backwards reality of private home usage, I must wait while the second caller gets an uninterrupted phone call. Occasionally, if the call is going to go on for longer, the person might say "Oh, can I call you back? Mike's been sitting on the other line." However, by this time I have most likely been gnashing my teeth in fury, and maybe I have even hung up.
Why do we do this to people, especially our friends? It used to be that if a person called, they would get a busy signal if the person they were calling was on the other line. The busy signal meant, for the second caller, that the person they were calling was busy and that they should wait a little while and call back when the person was, hopefully, free.
I know that call waiting is important in some ways. In the old days, the only way that a caller could notify a person of an emergency if the person they were calling was already on the phone was to have an operator break into the call, terminating the first call and connecting the second caller. Today, if there is an emergency, call waiting can make it possible for the emergency to be communicated quickly without an extra step.
Or if the caller is expecting an important phone call...perhaps Ed McMahon is going to call with news that they've won the sweepstakes...they can get that information quickly.
But when we get down to just everyday conversations, why should I, who called first, have my phone call interrupted and my status pushed down to second priority just because the person I've called has gotten indication that a second caller is trying to reach him/her? Why should I be able to break off someone else's conversation simply because I called second? This is wrong. It is discourteous to me, or to whomever was talking first, to break off the conversation and leave him or her in electronic limbo for 10 or 15 minutes.