I hate phones.
Not, like, any specific one. Or even the concept, really. I think it's great how much phones connect people. But I hate them. More accurately, I hate having to talk on them. I don't want to call in a pizza order if I can help it; I don't want to call customer service to work out an issue. I just don't want to be on the phone. (I don't mind talking to friends and family on the phone, however. Go figure.) But why? Tracing my developing personality--and, maybe, finding an answer to the question in the process--can be difficult. How much of what I see in myself is directly grown from what I've done in the past, and how much of it is a result of innate tendencies? I feel like I've grown more introverted over the past couple of decades--was it my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that made me feel like I had used up all my extroversion? (This one definitely makes sense to me, but perhaps that's just sublimation.) Still, there is one thing that I deeply misunderstood and has continued to affect me ever since it happened in 2001 that may be a clue to my animosity toward Alexander Graham Bell's invention. I worked at the Convergys, a telemarketing/telesupport firm close to where I grew up. I had just graduated from high school and needed a job to get money for the aforementioned mission. The Convergys hired me as an inbound operator. Our client was American Express and it was my job to "activate" the callers' credit cards. Really my purpose was to lie to them ("while your credit card activates…" when the card was already activated) and then try to upsell additional (and unnecessary) features on the credit card. The more features I sold to them, the larger my paycheck would be. I'm not much of a salesman, despite my understanding of words. I figure this is mostly because if I truly believe in what I'm selling (or, in the case of the mission, preaching), then I get myself tied into the sale and feel personally rejected, and if I don't care at all about what I'm selling, then I don't care if someone else wants to buy the product or not. This was certainly true of the Convergys job. I worked there throughout the summer of 2001. Shortly after the terrorist attacks on 11 September, with the strain of starting college, preparing for my mission, and deeply hating the menial, pointlessness of my job, I started looking for a way out. What ended up being the worst thing for me (mentally speaking) was when a customer called in, sick of the endless phone-trees and being placed on hold, and threatened to cut up his card. I told him that the card was now activated and that he could use it immediately, then ended the call. Nevertheless, my 18-year-old brain misheard what he said. I thought he'd threatened me with violence if his card wasn't activated immediately. He hadn't. He definitely only said that he'd cut up the card, not the teenage phone operator on the other line. But my fight/flight response was triggered and a surge of adrenaline tsunamied through my system. I'm not a fighter--like, at all--so the mental connection between that spurt of fear-induced adrenaline forged between me and two things: American Express (a company I don't much care about or give thoughts to) and telephones. I won't say that this is the original "trauma" that led to my telephonic antipathy, but it's certainly a component to it. Nevertheless, becoming an adult has meant that I've had to use the telephone more frequently than I would like. Sometimes I do have to set up appointments or sort out a problem via phone. It's not pleasant and I often try to come up with alternative ways of handling the issue sans that technology. (The fact that I don't want to talk to employees at stores if I can help it definitely limits these alternatives.) So the fact that I've called Gayle's oncologist office two or three times during the first two weeks of chemotherapy is an indication of something to me: When it comes to helping my family, I can overcome my distaste. I was on the phone as soon as my help wasn't enough to help her through the migraines that knocked her down the first day and when the antinausea medication was only making things worse. I hate using the phone, but more than that, I hate seeing my wife curled up in pain and feeling powerless at the sight. Here's what I've learned: Sometimes the only way you can fight for the ones you love is by doing what you don't want to do. I can't go through chemotherapy for Gayle, but I can be her liaison to the oncologist's office. Her fight is against an uninvited return of cancer; mine is a mangled memory that has affected me for many years. There's no parity between these things--one of the hard parts about watching a loved one go through health problems--and I'm not trying to assert that there is. Still, if fighting over the phone is the only way I can help Gayle, I'll do it. |
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