Phone phobics of any degree---check in here!

[WritingIsMyReligion]

I know I've done this before, but I love a good commiseration over irrational fear of talking on the telephone. Strangely, my phone phobia doesn't extend to answering the phone, just dialing it. I have no phobia with people I know, either. Ask me to call a stranger, however, and I'm a blubbering mess of fear.

:scared:

:hi:

[leftofthedial]

1. I hate talking on the phone

except for a few friends and family

[redqueen]

2. Well... I don't know that I'm phobic...

but I *hate* answering the phone. Hehehe... ironically, I think my first jobs as a telemarketer and a receptionist have mostly cured me. :)

I still almost never answer the phone at home, and I won't answer my cell unless I know who's calling.

There's very few people I feel comfortable talking to. Even with some relatives, I feel awkward and as if they don't really want to be talking to me.

[mwb970]

13. I never answer my home phone.

The 3 or 4 people that call regularly know to say "Hey, this is Bob" or whatever and I'll pick up if I'm home. Most calls are hangups anyway, presumably sales or charity.

I guess I have this idea that I will control my telephone usage rather than others.

[Crabby Appleton]

14. Same with me. nt

[redqueen]

16. Same here.

If they know me, they can talk on the answering machine, and I'll pick up. Otherwise, it never gets answered.

[no name no slogan]

3. I despise the phone

I usually don't answer mine, unless I know who is calling. I don't make many phone calls either. Even at work, unless it's somebody I know I need to talk to, I usually let voicemail get it.

[grace0418]

4. I'm not afraid, I just hate it. It's getting worse as I get older. Even if it's someone

I really want to talk to, I get very agitated the longer I'm on the phone.

[suninvited]

5. I have a phobia

about leaving messages on an answering machine. I just cant do it.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

8. I hate that when the person can't personalize the answering machine.

You have no idea if you've reached the right number or not--you could be leaving a long message for a stranger.

:scared:

[Tikki]

6. I don't talk on the phone.....

Once and awhile and if I'm out and about, I'll do a quick Q&A from family on the cell....


Tikki

[azmouse]

7. I don't use the phone unless I really have to.

And I really don't understand these people that are on their cellphones ALL the time.

[Silver Swan]

9. Phone phobic here

I hate to talk on the phone, especially if I have to make the call.

But I also don't like to answer the phone unless I know I am free to hang up.

Before I retired I worked for the Social Security Administration. In the mid-1990's, it was decided that everyone in the position I held would be required to answer the SSA 800 number. I tried to convince them that when I was originally hired, I was funneled to a position where I would not have to deal with the public because I was terrible at it. Of course, my pleas met deaf ears.

Fortunately, I was promoted to a position that did not require 800 number duties before I actually had to do it.

[ghostsofgiants]

10. I hate using the phone for social/casual purposes.

I work at a call center though, so business purposes I am fine with.

[taterguy]

11. This guy is frightened by the sound of the telephone

Oh yeah . . .

He's Looking For Clues

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1S9Or_bEGQI

[DarkTirade]

12. Not phobic... just don't particularly like using the phone.

Was even weirder when I was carrying around a cel phone for a little while.

[LiberalEsto]

15. I used to be a newspaper reporter

After more than 25 years of taking all kinds of crap from the hundreds and hundreds of people I called, I became a phone-o-phobic. Thank heaven there's an internet, because otherwise I might be a hermit.

[cyberswede]

17. delete

[mentalsolstice]

18. Big time!

I'm only comfortable talking to my husband and my parents. Otherwise, I hate it. Unfortunately, as an attorney working in the non-profit social services sector, I often had to discuss the deepest, darkest parts of a person's life over the phone.

[kentauros]

19. No phobia here, but maybe you don't want to hear

any of the following messages? ;)

I'm sorry, you have waited too long to dial
911 is not a working number
The number was free, but is busy again
Deposit 25¢
Your call can't be completed at the request of AT&T
Your service has been restricted
All circuits are busy
Le numéro composé n'est pas en service. The number dialed is not in service.
No Answer
The call you have made requires a coin deposit
Your call request has been canceled

Courtesy of the Phone Recording Archive.

:evilgrin:

[distantearlywarning]

20. I HATE talking on the phone.

Right now I have about 6 phone calls that I need to return. One of which I have been putting off since December.

People probably think I hate them. It's not them, it's the phone thing.

[JeffR]

21. Ted Hughes on the subject:

Do Not Pick up the Telephone

That plastic Buddha jars out a Karate screech

Before the soft words with their spores
The cosmetic breath of the gravestone

Death invented the phone it looks like the altar of death
Do not worship the telephone
It drags its worshippers into actual graves
With a variety of devices, through a variety of disguised voices

Sit godless when you hear the religious wail of the telephone

Do not think your house is a hide-out it is a telephone
Do not think you walk your own road, you walk down a telephone
Do not think you sleep in the hand of God you sleep in the mouthpiece of a telephone
Do not think your future is yours it waits upon a telephone
Do not think your thoughts are your own thoughts they are the toys of the telephone
Do not think these days are days they are the sacrificial priests of the telephone

The secret police of the telephone

0 phone get out of my house
You are a bad god
Go and whisper on some other pillow
Do not lift your snake head in my house
Do not bite any more beautiful people

You plastic crab
Why is your oracle always the same in the end?
What rake off for you from the cemeteries?

Your silences are as bad
When you are needed, dumb with the malice of the clairvoyant insane
The stars whisper together in your breathing
World's emptiness oceans in your mouthpiece
Stupidly your string dangles into the abysses
Plastic you are then stone a broken box of letters
And you cannot utter
Lies or truth, only the evil one
Makes you tremble with sudden appetite to see somebody undone

Blackening electrical connections
To where death bleaches its crystals
You swell and you writhe
You open your Buddha gape
You screech at the root of the house

Do not pick up the detonator of the telephone
A flame from the last day will come lashing out of the telephone
A dead body will fall out of the telephone

Do not pick up the telephone

[Starbucks Anarchist]

22. Over here.

:hi:

I also dread face-to-face conversation. ;)