My manager is like this. I don't know how to him it's easier to talk about something technical over the phone rather than in chat or email. When talking to people about IT crap, you have to sugar coat and use euphemisms which I don't have to do as much in email and the benefit with email is I can convey literally what I'm trying to do. My manager just doesn't want to fucking ready my emails.

It almost never is. Plus I probably have to write the info down anyways so just send me a text. If you have to call to explain it, I'll call you.

Me: yes

Me after the call: "could you send a summary of what we discussed?"

As long as they ask before they call it's no problem. If they call without writing first it's annoying

If they need to call me it's either actually complicated, or (much more likely) they haven't spent enough time to refine their idea to where they could just write it down.

I used to be like this, then realize when I die, all these moments will just be erased to history, so I'm like, whatever man. Can't escape it, banking problems, job interview calls, etc...

But online multiplay game voice chat? Nah fuck that, aint touching that radioactive shit, I aint playing multiplayer if that's a requirement. I'll die on this hill.

"did you leave the milk out of the fridge?"

Usually such a simple yes/no answer in my experience.

It's a pretty standard bandwidth/latency tradeoff in my view: email is high bandwidth (it's in writing, you can re-read, etc.), whereas phone is low latency (several back-and-forth explanations can happen in seconds). Each has its place.

If social anxiety is a factor, that's a perfectly valid, but separate, issue.

I disagree. It really is just way simpler and also in most cases it solves whatever problem you have much faster.

I used to be like this until I got a job that required constant phone calls. Now if I have to explain something using more than three sentences I'd much rather just talk.

Easier if you send it to me in writing so I can properly digest it instead of having it immediately spill out of my ears.

That's my sister. Good fucking god. I don't care about the supposed drama of your workplace. It is not interesting. You'd think that my tone would be enough to get thru her thick skull that I HATE TALKING ON THE PHONE but noooo...

Sometimes it really is much easier though.

Y'all don't talk?

At work this request means “I’m going to ramble for 45 minutes because I don’t understand it enough to form a question”.

Some of my friends insist on calling. Apparently they're used to doing VIDEO calls. Like guys, please, have some mercy.

I begin every business-related phonecall with "I'll want this in writing", and end it with "please send me an email with a summary of what we've talked about".

Guess what, the amount of phonecalls and complaints has halved, because I have proof in writing.

I'm mostly this way, but not today.

I had someone with an issue signing up for an account mention that they were not successful because when they tried to sign up, they got a message that they weren't eligible because there was already an account using that email address.

I told them if they have a Gmail account, just use the + addressing feature, otherwise, just create a Gmail account.

Someone else responded on the first person's account "But they don't have Gmail, so they can't do it."

Let me tell you, THIS is a situation where a call is necessary. There's nothing I can type that will suddenly unravel the layers here and that won't lead to more layers being laid. It will be 100000000000000% easier and less time consuming to schedule a meeting/call and talk through this than it would be to continue this discussion in text format.

"No."

Crisis averted, can get back to fixing things now. The only way you're getting me on the phone is if there's some audio component to the problem (alarm buzzers or tones they aren't able to identify) that isn't easy to explain in text. Other than that, there are usually just a handful of common issues and you can tell which path we're going down after a sentence or two of their description.