Reach out and touch solicitors

Monday, November 30, 1998

STATUS: Growing dependence on telephones complicates need for profitable conversation, business

If you could listen in while your neighbors ordered pizzas, you would learn a good deal about communication. When the time came to call the pizza place, you would almost definitely hear someone say, "I'll pay, as long as someone else orders."

See, some people have phone phobias - so, to help you out, this column is all about the wonderful world of telephones. I'm sure that you have friends who'd rather dig ditches than actually have to deal with someone on the phone.

I suppose ditch digging isn't all bad, but really, what kind of a column topic would that be?

Telephone talk certainly has its bright spots. I had a four-call-waiting phone call. How good is that? Basically, one can rate a phone call as one would rate a movie going experience. How? Well, when you go to the movies you have to wait through previews, right? You should keep track of the number of previews, though; the more previews you have to sit through, the better the movie is.

This rating system works the same way with phone calls - the more interruptions, the better the phone call.

But seriously, I need a phone life. People get their phone bills and they've called people all around the United States: New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., Washington State, Ohio and sunny Florida (as though sunny Florida really distinguishes it from regular Florida).

I have only called the Bay Area. I'm jealous of those calls to Hungary or Taiwan. I need someone to call in some exotic location like Paris or Tokyo. I think that these people think that they're better than me because they call people out of state. You talk to someone and they say, "Oh, the other day I called Alberta ... Canada you know." As though calling internationally is some sort of status symbol.

But then there is the king of communications status symbols: the cell phone.

You see a combination of business people and college students walking around with these things. The business people, I suppose, use them for "business" (it's really to call home and say that they'll be late for dinner) and college students got snockered into buying another thing that they really don't need.

After all, what college student really needs a phone all the time? (Don't answer that.)

Bottom line: I have no phone life. Maybe I should pick up a cellular phone. But, I know - use it with caution. I was sitting in a coffee shop once, and there was a guy sitting in his yuppie business suit talking into a cell phone.

He was speaking loudly, saying things like, "Buy, buy, buy!" And, "No, I won't need the house in the Hamptons this weekend." Then, as he was talking, the phone rang.

Consider his ego successfully deflated.

Speaking of egos, have you ever had someone call you and you really need their phone number from the end of the message, and of course, as a good telephone message giver they've left it, but ... guess what? They've decided to rattle off their phone number too quickly for you to figure out what their number is.

It's just like trying to read someone's writing who really can't write - you know they're really just kind of faking it.

According to a recent poll, 69 percent of women across the United States have given a fake phone number to a hormone-driven shark.

If a woman is completely paranoid, then she writes a phone number that's completely different - area code and everything. If she feels like messing with him, then she writes a phone number that's just illegible. And if she really wants to mess with him, then she writes the phone numbers almost correctly, just changing one of the digits. Then, if she has to see the guy again, and he asks why she gave him the wrong phone number, she can say that he must have misread the phone number, so it was just his fault.

Phone calls are the same way; if you're obligated to call someone back, but you really don't want them to call back (an ex-girlfriend, for example), then you can just rattle off the phone number too quickly for human-hearing to understand.

Phones are important, though, but I didn't know how hard life would be without a wireless phone until I came to school. What can you do without one? In my apartment, we don't have a cordless phone, and life is crazy. Cords leading everywhere - and every now and then the phone doesn't work - and we have to check every, single cord.

Advertisers know how important phones are to people's everyday lives, but they don't use the phone to advertise. I've never received a phone call from McDonald's, Ford or Calvin Klein. (Can you imagine what Calvin Klein commercials would be like over the phone?) Only one part of the advertising world advertises on the phones: the phone companies.

Kind of ironic, don't you think?

Still, the one group of people you don't want calling you are the long-distance phone-service people. I never knew how annoying these people were until I finally talked to them the other night.

I'm sitting at home, just taking it easy, and I get a phone call. I didn't want to answer it, perhaps because I already knew. And my dog, sitting in the corner, gets up and leaves, because he knows that something bad is coming.

So I pick up the phone, and she says that she represents blah-blah phone company. She says that she would like to tell me about the wonderful savings that I'm missing out on. She goes on and on and on and on and on and on.

I go back to watching my television show, and she keeps on talking. Then she asks if I wanted to switch long distance phone companies. I say, "No."

And, she says, "What!"

And I say, "I didn't know you were going to take it personally." Then she pulls out her Wicked Witch of the East voice and says, "I'm not taking it personal."

I pretty much gave up at that point, because I really didn't want to continue the conversation. Do I really want to prolong the agony? Of course not.

Still, there are ways to cut people off without saying you don't want to talk to them.

Some people believe that you don't learn anything in college that's applicable to daily life. Not true. They're wrong.

There's at least one little bit of knowledge that is very very helpful. I'm a communication studies student, and so I take some sociology classes. And, in the sociology department there are some professors who do what is called "Conversation Analysis."

And, they've found that the word "OK" is used to move on to the next subject. Not only that, but "OK" is used twice at the end of a conversation, so ... guess what?

If the conversation really doesn't seem to have any end in sight, then you can encourage the end to "come a little closer" by using "OK."

Another "solicitor" called me the other night and I let him speak a little bit and I just said "OK ... OK... OK" - and I cut right through his schpeel to the part when he says, "You have a good evening, sir."

And I did.

But in the end, I know telephone wires, for a lot of you, are umbilical cords that connect you to life as you know it, connecting you to what you need to survive: conversation.

And that's OK.

Spencer Hill

Hill is a fourth-year communication studies student. E-mail comments to srhill@ucla.edu.

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