True Confessions!

[DavePEI]

Hi Everyone.

I am a phone addict. At least I have collected phones since I was young.

Now a true confession. I hate talking on the phone!

On the other hand, I had to crazy glue a handset on my wife's ear, and have had to water-cool her favorite phone .

I don't know where the dislike for talking on the phone came from. Perhaps it was from all those rejections when I called for dates when I was young :-)

Perhaps it is because despite being on the No Not Call list, every second phone call is still from a telemarketer!

Maybe it is  left-over from the days before we had a private line and when you made a call, you could hear the audio dropping further and further as more and more neighbours listened in. My the rumours we started when we knew they were there.

One lady listened into every call. We could always get her to hang up by saying, "Good Night, Marion!".

Thankfully that period ended in the 1990s when everyone got private lines.

Anyway, I am curious - am I the only collector who doesn't like talking on the phone?

Dave

[TelePlay]

Dave, Dave, Dave,

Alas, you are not alone.

I sold over the road for 10 years (cold calling for appointments, etc) and then sold real estate for 10 years, just about the time cell phones came into existence (1990-2001) and have no desire to talk on the phone after that 24/7 real estate job. My first cell phone was the old Motorola flip phone that had a battery life of what, 2-3 hours.

I am one of the few people who can sit next to a ringing phone and not only not answer it but also not look to see who is calling, and not care. I have voice mail.

Other than work, I rarely use my phone (I get called with work changes and I call back with problems I encounter and that's it).

Now, there is the occasional medical call for appointments or prescription refills, and checking voice mail which I find a minor nuisance, but that's about it.

I really don't like phones, even though I now have about 150 of them. Darn addiction you guys got me hooked on . . .

[twocvbloke]

Anyway, I am curious - am I the only collector who doesn't like talking on the phone?

Of course not!!! I hate talking on the phone too...

My reasoning though is from working in a computer shop where the phone always rang and it was either a dim-witted customer, an irate dimwitted customer, a crank call, a telemarketer, and maybe now and then a decent, happy and polite customer, and I just got sick of answering the phones there, especially when they were interrupting my repairs or builds as it was difficult to multi-task when I had to assemble computers, talk to the customer AND look up a price on the price list, not to mention the phone I had was a cordless with dying batteries so occasionally dropped out mid-sentence, which didn't please the customers on the end of the line....

And home life didn't help much as back when I was still in my teens, I went all out on credit cards, and being young I didn't see them as something that needed to be paid off, but as free money, so I ended up with debt collectors calling at all times of the day wanting the money I owed, so, got sick of talking on the phone, and now I rarely answer the phone and hardly ever make any calls, as I see phonelines as a pathway to endless bad news....

But, when it comes to phones, I'm fascinated by them, how they work, how they're used and how they've evolved, it's just the use of them that annoys me...

[Greg G.]

Well, yes and no.  I dislike talking on my oh-so-ergonomic (not!) cell phone.  It's easier to cradle an E1 handset than that dinky, flat rectangle.  I love dialing my rotary, picking it up to answer, the satisfying "clunk" of hanging up, and the much easier to cradle G handsets, but the actual conversation is usually kept to a minimum.  However I'll admit it's a little more satisfying if I'm talking on a REAL phone.

[GusHerb]

If I must talk on a phone for more then 30 seconds it WILL be on one of the many 500's or Trimlines that reside around the house.
I absolutely hate talking on cellphones, there's no point when you can't hear the person anyway! oh and dropped calls make me go ballistic....just ask my mom...

But here's my confession...I disconnected the WE 302 a couple months ago in favor of a programmable electronic ringer....since my dad's been in and out of jobs and has gone broke, creditors start calling CONSTANTLY very early in the morning, so I've programmed that ringer to turn off at a certain time and not come on til later, and I use the call block feature...  I HATE the electronic ringer but it's the only way I can get some sleep!! Hopefully one of these days the 302 will get reconnected.

[AE_Collector]

Yeah I am not big on talking on the phone either. That said I rack up a million minutes on my work cell phone. I'm on one call getting beeped by others constantly. I always ignore call alert and just call them back later. With my landline it is always another customer calling wanting me to do something for them and I frequently secretly wish they would "go away"!

Terry

[canuckphoneguy]

Actually, since I started into this hobby back in December, I find I talk on the phone more than before. I think it has something to di with being able to dial all those numbers with the rotary phone. 

[liteamorn]

Since I started this hobby I find myself answering the phone everytime it rings, I enjoy talking on it and I enjoy hanging up on telemarketers even more, I have my cordless phone hooked up in eyesite of my classics and many times I don't even look at it.

I do however hate being woke up by my Mushroom, I love the phone, it is my crown jewel, well one of them, but even with the ringer on the lowest setting it sounds like Big Ben when it goes off when I am in a sound sleep.