I hate telephones

I love telephones, they're useful for having efficient and comfortable synchronous conversations. I don't think the level of hatred expressed here is warranted. Yeah, it's annoying when occasionally you receive a phone call at an unwanted hour, but sometimes it's crucial for people to get in contact with you.

I have a publicly listed number (in addition to a private one), and I have not received a spam call this year even once. When people call my phone, it is warranted.

Telephones remain the best way to contact emergency services, or settle things which you have no option to settle in person.

Me, too.

I don't hear, so I don't phone. However some business is almost impossible to conduct without phoning. AWS requires identification by phone. Customs tried to call me to ask me something about my bike I sent home from a holiday abroad. Credit cards are only unblocked by a phone call. And so on. (And phone relays are only a partial solution because some commpanies deem them insecure - I have currently a credit card I was not able to unblock, I will send them a cancellation notice.)

So, in other words, it's not hatred or perhaps an anxiety disorder, but a real discrimination of a disability, which leads me to agree with Mr Fisher.

"Last year, I received a series of 3am calls. At the dial tone, which is set to a horrifically unadjustable volume, I was woken from deep sleep to deep panic. "

That would be the ringtone. ( I suppose there are a large number of people who have never heard a dial tone.)

Also the desire to regard himself as an otherwise confident person (even superior to the majority!) seems to be very strong:

> In many polls, people list their number one fear as “public speaking”, beating out “death” by some margin. Not me.

Perhaps for this reason the fear of talking to a stranger must be so strongly suppressed.

Personally, I also often feel uncomfortable when accepting a call from an unknown number, but I try to lean into the pain and pick up nevertheless. I actually think of my phone as something like a therapeutic device that allows me to practice talking to strangers and little by little the feeling of uncomfortableness will fade away...

Besides his emotional issues there author touches on a few great points.

1. Why do we use a loose, unstructured medium like voice for customer support and the script and restrict almost everything about it? Maybe basic support would be better in a different medium and only escalations go to phone? 2. Social engineering is still one of the most effective ways of hacking and the phone is a great medium for that. Yet we apparently year the phone like a more secure channel.