Cold call:
n. a telephone call to someone who is not known or not expecting contact, often in order to sell something.
v. to call someone without preparation or referral.
Most Spo-fans I surmise are old enough to remember a time before iPhones when telephones were attached to the wall or sitting ensconced on the table, and it was the ‘house phone’ not an individual. The question (after saying hello and who this was) was ti ask “Is so-and-so there?”. This was followed by the recipient calling through the house “The phone’s for you!” I hope my memory is correct on this one that most phone calls were not expected but surprises – and pleasant ones at that. When you learned who was on the line your affect lit up with an “Oh, hi!” and what you were doing was stopped for awhile to gab a bit. If you didn’t want to talk, the picker-upper told the caller ‘you could not come to the phone right now’. If you really didn’t want to talk to anybody, you just let the phone ring. It was an arrangement that worked.
I recently learned the expression ‘cold call’. Apparently people no longer like phone calls from others. What was once considered a pleasant surprise is an upsetting interruption. Texts out of the blue are OK but not phone calls. I admit when my iphone rings my emotions are not that of elation but dread someone is wanting to talk to me, so I am no different on this one. All the same I don’t like it.
Brother #3 tells me his sons (now in their early 20s) never call anybody. They text rather. They see calling as a quaint old people’s thing. They also associate see all calls as cold calls.
I blame telemarketers why we cannot have nice things. We had such sales calls on our land lines but they seemed the exception not the rule. I also blame our mania to multi-task. We can carry on a text conversation while bouncing about but a phone with a cord to the wall obliged us to stop what we were doing to do the call, which wasn’t a bad thing.
I still call folks, but I always ask: “Did I catch you at a bad time?” which is an indirect speech act to ask “Do you want to talk to me now?”. Sometimes I am told yes, and I call back later. Unless my friends and family are insincere, it seems they still enjoy my phone calls out of the blue.
I have one friend who does not have a cellphone (can you imagine?). When I call George, I am calling his house. Sometimes he is not there or he does’t pick up (he also does not have an answering machine). He is always delighted to talk with me and he never tells me call later. It is like a phone call from the past, and it feels lovely.
Spo-fans: do you still call people just to chat?
39 comments
February 21, 2021 at 10:35 AM
Lori
My mom and one friend are about the only people that I usually talk to on the phone. The rest is usually text, unless someone really needs something. I can remember when long distance cost a fortune. Sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s they made calling long distance after 7pm free. That saved me a bundle since all of my family lived long distance.
February 21, 2021 at 12:05 PM
Urspo
I’ve heard this: people only call now their limited nearest and dearest; all else receive emails or texts. I wonder if my friends think they are ‘special’ this way when I call them?
February 21, 2021 at 10:38 AM
Sam
I’m good with calls from siblings or Motherin law or my husband. Calls coming in from my kids before a text surpise me as I fear something is wrong.
February 21, 2021 at 12:07 PM
Urspo
Yes, calls are more intimate.
Just the other day I was wondering about some context in the brothers’ text about Father. Someone asked me if I was worried and should I call. No, I replied if something was really wrong Brother #4 would call me.
February 21, 2021 at 10:40 AM
David Godfrey
I have a love hate relationship with the phone, I enjoy a call with a friend, or a couple of family members, but most of the rest is either work of junk. My cell has my office email on it, so I turn it off when I am not working, most texts from friends over the weekend get returned on Monday after I start work. We still have a house phone. Most of the voice calls I get on either my cell, or my home number are garbage.
February 21, 2021 at 12:07 PM
Urspo
I am mad-jealous you turn off your phone. Mine acts as a pager, so it is on 24/7. If I could I would turn it off between 9PM-8AM
February 21, 2021 at 11:09 AM
Parnassus
By the way, it wasn’t the cords that created the quality of the old-fashioned phone calls, because cordless phones came in before cell phones and other computerized services, and the cordless phones were a great convenience.
Computers are also responsible for the huge volume of junk calls, whether voiced by a real person or not, and thus are the big villains here. I think this constant barrage was what turned many off of answering the phone.
With each passing year the communication problems grow larger–now it is not even possible to call most businesses or organizations, even when you want to give them your money.
–Jim
February 21, 2021 at 12:08 PM
Urspo
indeed
With more abilities to reach us, the more we want privacy.
It becomes a bent status-symbol to be one that can’t be easily reached.
February 21, 2021 at 11:23 AM
anne marie in philly
what? I still have a “house phone” (landline) with an answering machine and caller ID. if I don’t know the person calling, the call goes right to the answering machine. 99% of the time it’s a telemarketer (rubbish).
and for those of you sneering in the background, we have the landline due to arteejee’s pacemaker apparatus requiring it. PS – (cr)apple products suck major ass. deal with it!
February 21, 2021 at 12:09 PM
Urspo
We had a rough time letting go of a landline.
Now I don’t miss it at all.
February 21, 2021 at 1:37 PM
anne marie in philly
PS – like your relative’s painting as your banner photo! I recognized it immediately.
February 21, 2021 at 11:55 AM
larrymuffin
We call people all the time.
February 21, 2021 at 12:09 PM
Urspo
So long as you don’t call them late for dinner.,
February 21, 2021 at 12:34 PM
Moving with Mitchell
I so rarely make social phone calls now. Video chats are the norm and even those are kept to a minimum. I text all the time although I still hate the pressure I feel with texting to respond immediately.
February 21, 2021 at 1:25 PM
Urspo
I concur there is a sense of immediacy to texting viz. when it shows up and you don’t immediately respond to it the sender fears something is the matter.
February 21, 2021 at 12:41 PM
Debra She Who Seeks
“Call Display” is God’s Gift to Modern Communications, as far as I’m concerned. If I don’t recognize a number, I don’t answer the phone. I do occasionally call people “just to chat” (especially over the past year due to Covid-19) but, like you, I always give them “an out” if they’re not inclined to chat. However, my preferred way of touching base with people is email. Pretty Boomer of me, I know.
February 21, 2021 at 1:26 PM
Urspo
My niblings consider email as quaint like calling someone, something ‘their parents do’.
February 21, 2021 at 1:22 PM
jefferyrn
I call my mother every Friday after work. “Happy Friday” is our usual greeting.
February 21, 2021 at 1:26 PM
Urspo
Good for you two!
I just got off the phone speaking with my father. We didn’t say anything substantial but it was deemed a good call notwithstanding.
February 21, 2021 at 1:42 PM
BadNoteB
I still have a home land-line maintained solely for the few techno-challenged clients that insist on communicating via fax machine. I’m certain the cell phone has a solution for that, but I’m too techno-weary to go looking for it on-line.
I am fortunate to have two aunts still living, both in their 80s, that are the only people I know who seem to enjoy receiving impromptu phone calls anymore. I’ll never forget the hurt both of my parents felt at being completely ignored and forgotten by three grandchildren during their last three years of life. It wasn’t necessarily that they’d been “forgotten”; the problem was that neither of them could master cell phone operations to permit texting. There is little surprise that loneliness and isolation have become a recognized health issue with our elderly as I often have similar feelings myself with these newest norms of communication.
My first partner lived hundreds of miles from any of his family. Perceived as living “the bachelor’s life” and without grandchildren to visit, the expectation was that he would travel home for annual visits with the family. I got to know his father and 6 siblings quite well by phone during our first couple of years together just by being the person to randomly answer our landline whenever they’d call. I was eventually invited to accompany him home on an annual visit because they were dying to meet that charming person they’d all been chatting with by phone for years!
My current (and final!) partner and I have been together for 22 years. His family lives hours and $$$ away by plane. In our cell phone era, both of his parents died with me never speaking to or meeting either of them. Though my prominence in his life was announced during his visit home for the funeral of the last surviving parent when he chose to come-out to his siblings, I have never met his brother and sister and only spoken with the sister by phone once. This seems an unlikely situation in the land-line era yet is the new reality in our cell phone society.
Just as news reporting has been reduced to sound bites, our interpersonal communications have devolved to brief exchanges of fragmented sentences punctuated with emojies. While I love the written word, it retains a sense of formality and place that is rather stiff and void of the spontaneity afforded by impromptu verbal communication. Ultimately, this is bound to take a toll on the quality of our interpersonal relationships.
February 21, 2021 at 3:52 PM
Urspo
thank you for writing this.
I hope we all turn around to make our relationships and communications more real and valuable.
February 21, 2021 at 2:41 PM
Robzilla, Native of Slam Diego
I like calling people once in awhile, but texting is more convenient. The only thing that stops me from making most calls is “Oh, that’s right. They’re three hours ahead of me.”
February 21, 2021 at 3:53 PM
Urspo
You have a point: most of my nearest and dearest are 2-3 time zones away depending on the time of the year.
February 21, 2021 at 3:47 PM
Old Lurker
For the most part I have no phone, either a landline or cellphone. Because of COVID I had to jerry-rig my office phone so that I could make calls from my laptop at home. That allows me to make outgoing calls, but it is rare I take incoming ones.
I mostly need a phone for appointments and to communicate with a couple of people who do not have Internet at home.
February 21, 2021 at 3:53 PM
Urspo
I hope this works for you.
February 21, 2021 at 5:04 PM
Old Lurker
Not really. I would rather have no phone or Internet at home. Someday soon I may be homeless or living in some awful rooming house, and the I will get my wish.
February 21, 2021 at 4:15 PM
Linda Practical Parsimony
I despise texting! DESPISE!!! Got it? On my cell phone if I want to say “call me,” I have to hit a b c a j k l m d e . That is too much. And, now I cannot do that since I dropped my Rugby phone, the indestructible one, and now text does not work! Oh, I only want to text someone if they keep sending me texts expecting an answer. I cannot text now, just call me.
February 21, 2021 at 4:28 PM
Urspo
Works for me!
February 21, 2021 at 5:47 PM
Pipistrello
Family and best friend ring on our landline, which is a piece of beautiful vintage furniture in my book. My brother rings on my mobile as I think he’s forgotten my home number, haha, but I suspect it’s just the convenience of the redial function. I still remember our phone number when I was a tot, although the only people I would have spoken to were probably grandparents. We weren’t allowed to “play with it” as phone calls cost proper money in the olden days – we did, once or twice, make random phone calls to unknown peoples and hang up on them, and such delinquent behaviour grieves me upon remembrance. We’re being pestered with robot calls these days, mostly threatening imprisonment for cheating the Guv’ment out of taxes. Hardly make the blood chill but the annoyance factor is high.
February 21, 2021 at 6:17 PM
Urspo
terribly annoying. This taints all calls as to be annoying.
February 22, 2021 at 4:46 AM
Autolycus
I still keep a landline number bundled in with my internet connection, so I do use it to call, especially the kind of call where I’m going to be in a queue, so hanging on for half an hour won’t cost me any more.
I have to admit I rarely get calls other than spammers, but one of those exceptions is an old friend in Australia who hasn’t quite come to terms with the internet and smartphone apps (which reminds me, I owe him a call, though with the time difference it means I should probably do it when I’m barely awake in the morning).
Family, by and large, use our WhatsApp group, with occasional posts on Facebook (I now know a lot more about distant cousins in Canada).
February 22, 2021 at 6:13 AM
Urspo
Sometimes I feel like having a landline. It feels similar to my recent Christmas prize of a cassette tape player.
February 22, 2021 at 5:46 AM
Hugh W. Roberts
Yes, occasionally, I do phone people for a catch-up. During these times of lockdown, I think it especially important.
However, I do recall only one phone in the house how everybody would rush to answer it if it rang. These days, it seems nobody rushes to answer the phone anymore. Yet, if a notification alert comes up on our mobile phones or tablets, we drop everything and rush to check it out.
February 22, 2021 at 6:14 AM
Urspo
That is well said. Indeed, when my phone rings I hesitate; when the phone ‘pings’ I have to pause to no immediate respond like a well-trained monkey
February 22, 2021 at 7:38 AM
Hugh W. Roberts
See. I told you, but it’s the same here too.
February 22, 2021 at 8:27 AM
wickedhamster
I gradually came to despise the telephone. This was entirely due to my mother’s weekly phone calls. ‘Nuff said.
February 22, 2021 at 10:05 AM
Urspo
this is a common dynamic where the male child is traumatized by his mother leading to neurosis anxiety and going to the wrong schools. Just remember there is nothing that an expensive analysis can’t prolong.
February 22, 2021 at 9:41 AM
rjjs8878
I’ll chat with close friends on the phone but mostly text. Sometimes a call is easier than sending a really long text.
February 22, 2021 at 10:06 AM
Urspo
yes sometimes it is easier.