Telephone terror

Is it also bothering you that much? A phone that seems to ring the whole day, taking away the attention of what you're doing at that time. A caller who automatically thinks that you have nothing else on your mind, besides picking up the phone and have a conversation with him/her. The mobile phone made it all worse. There is a sort of moral obligation that you need to be available at any time, any place. The famous television commercials 'So Hi' (in the Netherlands) want to make you believe that you're really cool, oh no, not me. The last couple of months I have developed a sort of resistance against this telephone terror. Modern technology is great! It's good to have a profile on your phone called 'silent' or 'meeting'. When you look at the display (by coincidence of course), it's my decision whether or not to answer the call. Another great advantage is the possibility of displaying the phone number of the caller. Beware the fool that dares to disengage the number recognition mode on this phone. Anonymous callers have a great chance that their call will be neglected. I have answered too much telemarketeteers trying to sell me an insurance for my funeral or a new mortgage for my house. Is number recognition put on, then I always try to identify who is on the other side. In case that person is also in your contacts list, it's easy because you see the name of the person. A nice help to decide whether or not you want to talk to this person. In case of no name, there is a 50% chance that I take the call, otherwise it will disappear in the black whole called voicemail. Because it can really be a black hole in case a person neglects all his voicemails. You give someone the impression that he has reached you, the way Minister Rita Verdonk once did, trying to call prime minister Balkenende, but it strongly depends on the way how someone deals with his voicemail. A collegue once told me: well you can leave a message on my voicemail, but why bother. I never listen to it. Sometime you see people start running when their phone starts ringing. Not me, too late, well sorry, try again when you're house is on fire. In case I forget to put the phone on silent mode, there is always that little red button on top: shut down that miserable thing. Well you know, it really helps. A strategy of 'hard to reach' causes the number of incoming calls to decrease dramatically. A sort of out-of-office assitent effect. When someone has the feeling that you can't be reached anyway, there is a considerable chance that he won't send you a message.