There’s one guy at work who calls unprompted. If I don’t answer, he messages me asking to call him back.
I don’t call him back anymore. I can’t know if it’s going to be a 5-minute call or a 45-minute call so I assume the latter and I don’t have time for that
You can choose to answer the call or not, and the person calling should be okay with that. If they want you to call back they should tell what it’s about.
But getting mad at people for not asking to call as a blanket response is madness. (I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing, BTW.) Sometimes you can solve things with synchronous communication much faster than you could messaging.
… and either way, my concentration is broken for (what researchers keep saying) is 30+ minutes.
Nah. I’m not in the mood to speak to THAT asshole after he wrecked my morning.
In the middle of a text chat, you say “call me and share your screen” and then we ‘go voice’. Calling without warning, now, and without justification (visible flames or blood, timely health risks, massive outages), is like dropping by your cousin’s out out of the blue for a week.
I didn’t say I get mad that he calls without asking. My comment was about the “please call me back” - that message could have been the question. It’s the same as “hi”
I think straight calling someone on a chat program is rude because it unnecessarily breaks flow. I have to connect my Bluetooth headphones so I can hear you from the start, but that takes a couple seconds. If I’m not quick you’ll stop calling before I’m ready, and it happens frighteningly often that people don’t answer when calling back immediately, so you’ll break my flow a second time.
Usually, 15-30 seconds are enough for me to mentally “put away” whatever I’m working on, which allows me to quickly resume once we’re done. Often I write a comment describing what my last thoughts were. That can sometimes save a good 5 minutes or more.
At worst I’ll say “give me 5 minutes” or “if not important, does 14:30 work?”, but that’s because I’m deep in thought and it will take a long time to get back to where I am.
Consider this a way to train others – calling gets nothing if you’re not in my group or chain of command. Send an email or, if urgent, send a chat message.
There’s one guy at work who calls unprompted. If I don’t answer, he messages me asking to call him back.
I don’t call him back anymore. I can’t know if it’s going to be a 5-minute call or a 45-minute call so I assume the latter and I don’t have time for that
You can choose to answer the call or not, and the person calling should be okay with that. If they want you to call back they should tell what it’s about.
But getting mad at people for not asking to call as a blanket response is madness. (I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing, BTW.) Sometimes you can solve things with synchronous communication much faster than you could messaging.
… and either way, my concentration is broken for (what researchers keep saying) is 30+ minutes.
Nah. I’m not in the mood to speak to THAT asshole after he wrecked my morning.
In the middle of a text chat, you say “call me and share your screen” and then we ‘go voice’. Calling without warning, now, and without justification (visible flames or blood, timely health risks, massive outages), is like dropping by your cousin’s out out of the blue for a week.
I didn’t say I get mad that he calls without asking. My comment was about the “please call me back” - that message could have been the question. It’s the same as “hi”
I think straight calling someone on a chat program is rude because it unnecessarily breaks flow. I have to connect my Bluetooth headphones so I can hear you from the start, but that takes a couple seconds. If I’m not quick you’ll stop calling before I’m ready, and it happens frighteningly often that people don’t answer when calling back immediately, so you’ll break my flow a second time.
Usually, 15-30 seconds are enough for me to mentally “put away” whatever I’m working on, which allows me to quickly resume once we’re done. Often I write a comment describing what my last thoughts were. That can sometimes save a good 5 minutes or more.
At worst I’ll say “give me 5 minutes” or “if not important, does 14:30 work?”, but that’s because I’m deep in thought and it will take a long time to get back to where I am.
Just don’t pick up, finish your thoughts and call back. You are absolutely under no obligation to drop everything to pick it up immediately.
Consider this a way to train others – calling gets nothing if you’re not in my group or chain of command. Send an email or, if urgent, send a chat message.
As I said, this regularly leads to breaking focus again a couple of minutes later.