This thread if for everyone who is as frazzled as me right now. It just never fucking stops. The constant fucking email, phone calls, texts, with everyone wanting something. I would do anything to go back to pre cellphone days. I can not put my phone down for five minutes without text messages “don’t forget to…” “can you….” “I need you to…” “this needs to be…”
And you get done juggling that bullshit and notice eight new emails have come in and then someone calls just to chat
SCREAM
Betsy
This!
I would give anything to go back!
The constant interruptions.
And there are five different ways that stuff can come in, so you never know if that thing needing follow-up or the photo that you wanted is in your text, your email, or other venue.
Life is short and we piddle away our time on these inconsequential demands.
Then again, as soon as I send a general auto-reply message saying DONT BOTHER ME! DONT LEAVE A VM! DONT TELL ME MY VM IS FULL IT WoRKS BETTER THAT WAY!! — that’s the moment I get a message from my precious aunt or long-lost friend or rarely-heard-from cousin or someone who saw a good job advertised or ……..
lurker
Believe you misspelled guh! Otherwise completely agree…
germy
Life is just one damn thing after another.
Hunter Gathers
I got so freakin’ tired of email and text messages that I took a 60% pay cut to work with kindergartners.
And before anyone chimes in with “The kids ruined communication, what with their email and text messages and whatnot”, the worst offenders are people over 50.
lurker
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – F. B.
dexwood
Next time get a phone with an off button.
DRickard
Y’know, cell phones can be turned off.
MisterForkbeard
Yep. I’m right there with you. I had a great lull last week because everyone took the first half of the week off, and now… bam. A week worth of stuff piling up in a day or two.
VeniceRiley
Without all this, I would not have friends or a fiancé. At least, not the same ones I have now. I suppose it’s the lesbian thing. Definitely helps connect far flung communities with common interests.
So say we some!
Omnes Omnibus
As a counterpoint, I just resolved a couple of problems (little ones to me, but the kind of thing that elderly clients fret about) this morning and made two old people happy. It took a few phone calls and one or two emails.
Baud
I set my phone to alert me only when it’s someone I care about.
Anotherlurker
I seldom engage the ring function on my cel phone. I let most calls to go to voicemail. I block spam #s. I use spam filters for email.
I find that the most annoying are the emails and txt messages from Democratic organizations. “Jim, we are in tears……” “Jim, we haven’t heard from you. Do you support trump?” “Jim, Mitch Mconnel is ballistic because of this one weird trick….”.
Thankfully, I never get spam from The Traitor Party. I never replied to any of their come ons, over the years, so they don’t know I exist, hopefully.
Junk emails, texts and phone calls are treated as such and weeded out quickly. This was a long learning curve for me, but it is effective.
lowtechcyclist
1) Have at least two email addresses. One for just your family and friends. The other(s) for everything else. Check in on the latter once every few days to make sure you’re not missing anything important.
2) I’ve basically done the same with phone numbers. We still have a landline, and that’s my ‘everything else’ line. The cell phone is only for family and friends, with one exception: airlines so that if my flight gets canceled, they can reach me while I’m traveling.
MagdaInBlack
Sounds like my normal work day, John =-)
The Moar You Know
I had major intestinal surgery on Saturday. My boss – who knew I was having said surgery – called me while I was still in the recovery room for something that didn’t have to be dealt with until today AND someone else could have handled.
Don’t answer? Not an option. This one will just keep calling back, like a goddamn cat outside your bedroom. Can do it longer than you can take it.
These phones, no two ways about it, are a curse. Nothing anyone can say will convince me they of any benefit to society at all.
lurker dean
ugh, i feel you. our issue is all the spam and scammer contacts my elderly mom gets. last week i had to configure her phone so that everything goes to voicemail. i looked into her call history (she has voip so you can do that) and the poor woman has been getting close to 100 spam calls a week. and her email is chock full of spam which i clean out as i can. and i stopped over and took a grocery bag full of junk mail full of medicare and SS scare scams, police/fire/military scam groups, and religious scams. it never ends, and sadly she is at a point where she is unable to know what is a scam and what isn’t. scammers operate virtually unfettered on all different platforms, to prey on everyone, esp the elderly. even nomorobo seems to do little.
gene108
Constant text messages and phone calls from people you know, John, is the price you pay for living an exciting life.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Am i on your list? :-)
WaterGirl
@The Moar You Know: I’m sorry to hear about your surgery, hope all is going well with your recovery!
R-Jud
Juggling home school, grad school and regular work during the pandemic has forced me to put up some weaponized boundaries to get enough blocks of undivided attention to function.
As a result, I have become one of those tiresome people who:
– Shuts off all push notifications for every app, except SMS texts and phone calls (that’s how someone who REALLY needs me, like my kid’s school, would get in touch)
– Blocks all social media sites using Freedom, allowing for a daily 90 minutes of browsing (45 on the desktop, 45 on the phone)
– Only replies to e-mail a few times a day (an hour in the a.m., half an hour after lunch, half an hour before quitting time – usually 7:30 p.m. if I’m working around The Child) and closes any e-mail tabs if it’s not e-mail time
– Leaves the phone on the charger in the next room when working
– Leaves the phone on the charger in the next room when in bed
– Blocks the web browser on Kindle so it’s just a thing for reading books and checking the weather
Nobody on the work/grad school end has complained about my “reduced” availability yet.
However, I don’t have my parents nearby like you, Cole. If I did, I think I would probably be more available for them (and get interrupted a lot more).
Poe Larity
John, you need to learn to delegate. Empower your minions.
Here you go: Can You Get To That
It’s the 50th Anniversary of Maggot Brain so that should be on full rotation.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/07/11/arts/music/funkadelic-maggot-brain.html
Baud
@WaterGirl:
No. My car warranty is just fine, WaterGirl, and I don’t want to sell my place.
Benw
Hahaha wait until somebody gets you onto Slack.
Redshift
I guess I’m luckier, because the cell phone era works pretty well for me. I’m not required to have work email on my phone, so I don’t, and they don’t have my personal phone number either except in some HR emergency file. I was never willing to pay for caller ID on the landline, so that’s a plus for the cell. My family doesn’t text except for Ms. Redshift and my niece (rarely.) And I’ve turned off most notifications and only deal with emails and such when I choose to.
West of the Rockies
Are you still in academia, John? I hated the invasive, non-stop demands. I taught at two colleges. One semester I had a full load at one and a half load at the other. Each school had its own email portal for the instructor. Each class had a separate email portal. I had my own personal email, of course. That’s 9 God-damned accounts to deal with (plus landline and cell phone, of course).
It was constant: did you send in your book order, read my essay (“After all, I submitted it at least ten minutes ago!”), sign up for summer classes, complete your Student Learning Outcomes survey, learn the new online platform, sign so-and-so’s congratulations on retirement/tenure/promotion/new baby card?
I hated it.
James E Powell
@Poe Larity:
I’m not saying it was intended to promote drug use, but you know, things happen.
Redshift
@Benw: It took me a while, but I’ve managed to mostly get Slack (for work) to the point where it doesn’t grab my attention unnecessarily.
It’s somewhat similar to what I did with Outlook, which is to turn off all notifications of new email (including the little bubble on the icon) and set a reminder to read through my email three times a day. Before that it was horrible for my ability to focus.
I really wish all software makers would realize that constant interruptions with no easy filtering for importance are just bad for anyone trying to get things done, and provide a mode that lets you lump them together into a few fixed time slots (preferably as a system service, so you don’t have to do it in each individual app.)
The Moar You Know
@WaterGirl: thank you. It will be a long one.
satby
@lurker dean: I blame AARP. Though I resisted joining it for years, I did last year when I became Medicare bait. And my spam calls, emails, junk mail, etc all exploded. I block almost everything, but it hasn’t slowed down at all. It’s positively predatory.
Kelly
Since we can’t seem to stop spammers maybe we should make it illegal to purchase from or donate to the spammers. “For purchasing an extended car warrantee from a spammer I sentence you eight hours of community service.”
trollhattan
We’re going through a long, complex, unwanted, at least by some of us, reorganization layered on top of Covid response and a physical office move into a new building (designed pre-Covid as an open plan, hah!). One result has been a recent drop in things to work on which, in sum ain’t bad but also has me pondering what happens when my little group is swallowed up by the much larger organization. “We already have people who do what you do.”
Don’t have a work phone, so there’s that. It’s possible to get work email on my personal phone but that requires loading an app I do not care to have on my personal phone, so, nope.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Oh, man, that was harsh!
WaterGirl
@The Moar You Know: May it go smoothly and pass quickly!
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I should have added a :-)
Baud
@The Moar You Know:
Feel better.
different-church-lady
@DRickard: Cellphones can be turned off. The obligations associated with making a living in the 21st Century cannot.
different-church-lady
@Betsy:
and right this second another ten are being invented.
Ruckus
Don’t know android but iPhone allows me to block contacts.
It takes a while to block the worst offenders and yes, it never actually stops, but after not all that long, the worst offenders don’t get through and the constant level of bullshit goes way down. The next step is that as you get older, there are fewer people your age to bother you. In the period from Oct 2016 to Nov 2018 I lost 12 people I knew, and only one was older and that by a year. My phone contact list used to be well over 500, it’s 78 now.
Baud
@Ruckus:
Good to see you back.
Benw
@Redshift: yeah, same here, I have to have all notifications turned off. I’m amazed at how some of my younger colleagues can have notifications going ALL THE TIME
kindness
My daughter shakes her head my way all the time with respect to my cell usage. I usually have it in my butt pack and only pull it out to look at it when I think about it. I call people back and reply back to texts but frequently it’s a day or two later. I almost never actually answer the thing.
WhatsMyNym
@Ruckus:
Not only can you block contacts, you can have individuals sent to voicemail, control who can get thru at night, and more. Plenty of articles on the internet to help you set this up on your version of Android.
Also, I use Textra (messaging) and AquaMail (email) for their extended features.
lurker dean
@satby: that’s good to know and makes sense. i’m of aarp age but haven’t signed up. i notice that while i get my share of spam calls, email, and mail, they aren’t the medicare and SS scare my mom, who is a member of aarp, gets. so i guess i won’t be signing up for aarp any time soon!
gene108
@R-Jud:
Absolutely amazing how you are managing grad school, work and family. That’s really, really hard to do.
WhatsMyNym
I always find you have to train people that you’re not going to respond right away. Otherwise some folks will just try an carry conversion on if you respond. Some people just don’t seem that busy at work (though will tell you that they are when you want something).
rikyrah
@Anotherlurker:
If I don’t know the number, I don’t answer it.
Period.
I do have to answer all work emails.
Personal emails are another issue.
WhatsMyNym
@lurker dean:
You can opt-out of most of it online. I just get the magazine and a few insurance offers in the mail. Very little email and the subject line tells you what is.
Uncle Omar
I retired at the right time, just before the Interruption Age really took off. Up until then I used to say that only Very Unimportant People had cell phones because they could be harassed by bosses, spouse, children, nitwits, and scammers at any time no matter what they were doing or where they were.
Currently the Omar household has two cell phones and one landline. The landline has an answering machine. Usually one of us can listen to see if the caller leaves a message or if it’s someone either of us wants to talk to. Most robos now don’t leave messages if they detect an answering machine. The cell is usually in another room and when I walk by it I will sometimes pick it up and see if there has been any action. If it’s a call I don’t recognize, I erase it. A friend has told me that if you have an answering machine on a landline and turn if off after 6 weeks or so there are no more robo calls. We assume that the robos assume that you’re dead.
Of course if you are still working or in school or have more than one or two living relatives and friends who are sure that you need to hear about everything that has happened in the last hour, none of our solutions are very helpful.
Ruckus
@WhatsMyNym:
I figured it was basically the same but one never actually knows.
Redshift
@Kelly:
There has been some improvement in preventing spoofed caller ID numbers recently (the ones that are faked to match your area code and prefix, for example, but apparently there are worse ones that have been faking calls from banks or Social Security.) I feel like I’ve noticed the difference, and more of the incoming spam calls are from area codes like Colorado or Oregon, making them easier to ignore without thinking about it. (Though that could just be random chance.)
OzarkHillbilly
Ahhhh… The joy of telling the world to fuck right off.
Pennsylvanian
Surprised there isn’t any mention of the Kraken hearing today on the blog. I listened in on You Tube and that was some crazy shit. Everyone is trying to deflect and they are all still lying. The judge was having none of it and the lawyer who closed for the state said lie or lying or liars about 10 times. Lin Wood is pretending he didn’t have anything to do with it.
Apparently, they were all just there to get each other coffee and nobody knows who wrote the affidavits, so can we all just go now? Kthxbye!
NotMax
What gets my (old) goat are the people, businesses, sites, discounts, etc., etc., etc. with whom, at, or through which there is no way provided/possible to proceed or interact unless/until one includes a cell phone number. Hello? Not everyone has, needs or wants one.
Average number of times my landline is used to make or receive calls in a month: 5.
Average number of e-mails received or sent in a month: less than 1.
.
J R in WV
@The Moar You Know:
You especially should have blocked calls from anyone not actually related to you for the duration!!
Folks!! Cell phones have an off button. Since I live in a dark spot for the wireless network, we have cell phones we use in the cars or when we’re in town. Otherwise the phones are TURNED OFF all the time.
You might be shocked at how long your battery charge lasts with the phone turned OFF most of the time. If I’m going into town, I turn it on when I enter the wireless world, half way into town. Otherwise, NADA, turned off. Phone charge lasts weeks!
PaulB
Ah, the advantages of being an introverted curmudgeon. I don’t have this problem because I let all calls go to voicemail and I almost never respond to, or even look at, texts in real time. And since I’m not on any social media platform and have none of the apps installed on my cell phone, I cannot be reached that way, either. No app on my phone has permission to send me a notification.
For those of you who have work requirements such that the above isn’t practical, you have my sympathy.
Does this mean that I occasionally miss out on something? My experience so far has been no, not really, at least not anything I care about. I guess I could miss out on a notice that someone has had an accident or is in the hospital but, even there, I’m okay with that risk. If a friend really wants to get hold of me *right now*, they know to be persistent.
lurker dean
@WhatsMyNym: i just looked and it looks like there are decent benefits that can be had from joining. i guess i’ll consider it but keep an eye out for the opt out.
lurker dean
@NotMax: i envy you. my mother’s call history indicates she got/made over 500 calls last month. maybe 50-100 are legit calls to/from friends and family, the rest are all spam.
wife and i looked into going to maui again before the delta variant closes things but couldn’t find any rental cars, even from the local places. and i understand there is water rationing for locals but not for tourists, which i’m sure the locals love. with so many countries closed or requiring quarantine, or having low vaccination rates, hawaii seems to be getting slammed with tourists.
NotMax
@lurker dean
Slammed indeed. Rental car companies shipped thousands of vehicles off island last year (they filled up field after field of scrub land surrounding the airport before departing) and have been tardy about replacing them.
As for the water, it’s S.O.P. to have drought restrictions for certain parts of the island during the summer.
Juju
I know I’m late to this rodeo, as I usually am, but I understand the frustration with it all. I’m not on Facebook or Twitter, nor will I ever be because I’ve had a stalker, a landline phone harasser, who called 69 times in one day, and a sort of email stalker who seemed to know things about me that he shouldn’t have known, plus he sent naked from the neck down pictures of himself to me. Only people I know get my cellphone number and I text with them, and keep that under control. I hate all the emails. I wish anything and anyone related to the Democratic Party would just take a break from time to time. I took the weekend off because I was visiting with very special nephews and a nephew’s girlfriend. One I hadn’t seen in almost three years and the other I hadn’t seen since he attended my sister’s wedding in 2008. Meeting the girlfriend is a BFD, I am guessing, and it was a great visit. However when I checked my email today, I hadn’t checked since Friday, I had over 400 emails and the majority of them were from Democrats raising money for elections and whatnot. I understand the need, but I got more than six from Adam Schiff over the weekend. At this point you’re just irritating me. Sometimes just take a break from the fundraising. Also, I ordered personalized m&ms a year ago for the last niece who graduated from high school. I don’t need to get more emails from m&ms than I do from my niece. I’m done ranting and I actually do feel a bit better.
TomatoQueen
Nomorobo and Comcast/Xfiniti gave me a headache yesterday (but it was Sunday ffs) so much so that I did not follow up on my issue today. I had another issue today with another bureaucracy and was so glad I have my landline cos a cellphone would’ve become a missile. But I can’t use a cellphone any more owing to manifestations ever more obvious of the family essential tremor, in my right hand. The routine assumption and requirement of one’s having a cellphone recently caused me to CANCEL MY AMAZON ACCOUNT (It can be done fuckem), dumbfounding the moron at customer service, quite a pleasure at the time. Caller ID and my new phone with its smartness baked in work well together.
Unfortunately the net.fcuk-based lost pet sites have increased spam & spoofery as a side effect & I must say that the monetization of one’s misery and pain isn’t much appreciated, but spam and spoofery is unwarrranted. My own damn fault tho’, so must deal.
Caller ID is worth every penny to me.
NotMax
@
Amazon doe not require having a cell phone. I don’t have one and have never had any issues there with the sole exception of trying to make use of its Prime deals at Whole Foods.
NotMax
Fix.
@TomatoQueen
Amazon does not require having a cell phone. I don’t have one and have never had any issues there with the sole exception of trying to make use of its Prime deals at Whole Foods.
TomatoQueen
@NotMax:
Oh really? So I hallucinated those bastards three times refusing to EMAIL me a password reset link when confirming a password change? I dreamed it when they told me by help desk chatbot and by phone that they only way they would sent me a link was by TEXT message? What is the means by which people send TEXT messages? Not my landline, and not my laptop, and that’s what I got. Nor did those fuckers offer to buy me a phone, and send it to me by two-day shipping which always ends up three to four day, so I could fail to operate it due to my aforementioned tremor. So I cancelled the account, entirely, some how suddenly remembering that those bastards have competition, which I do not for a minute regret.
Hint: try resetting your Amazon password, get a confirmation, all fine, then get an invalid password notice the next day, then receive a screen link to reset which when clicked yields the bullshit text message requirement, then find the customer service phone number, then deal with the stupid moron.
Another hint: don’t ever contradict people’s lived experience. Never do it.
NotMax
@TomatoQueen
Sorry to hear about your travails. I’ve changed my password there several times over the years and have always been able to successfully handle everything via e-mail.
Mom had a password problem with them and they sent a new confirmation code by voice text (oxymoron though that may be) on her landline.