It’s for you

No one in the New South answers their phone any more.

Well, almost no one. I have recently stumbled onto an interesting sociological discovery, and I want to test a hypothesis here and gauge your response. 

No one who lives in the big city answers their phone any more. Folks who live out in the country will still answer their phone occasionally, whether it’s attached to the wall or in their pocket.

At my day job, we’re preparing for our largest event of the year, and it requires contacting invitees to secure RSVPs. As it turns out, not only do people not answer their phones these days, they also do not respond to invitations to high falutin events with the top elected officials in the state. But the death of RSVPing is a lament for another day.

Mind you I have not been making calls from this list of 200-plus Georgia citizens myself, but I carefully if not obtrusively supervise industrious young public servants who are making these calls. What they report to me is not that they are surprised by the lack of people picking up the phone to receive calls from the suspicious area codes of the greater Atlanta metro region, they are surprised by the number of good people out here who do pick up the phone and take their calls.

“Constituent services” is part of my duties in my day job that I try not to delegate. If folks are mad or have questions, I want to be the one to call them back and hear them out, especially if they have been referred to our team by an elected official.

In making these calls, I have also been surprised by the number of people who take my calls. The first few times I reached out, I prepared a voicemail message in my mind while the phone rang, only to be interrupted by a real, live, actual human being. It was astounding.

In each instance thus far, I have had delightful conversations with salt of the earth folks who just needed some help navigating the seemingly impenetrable bureaucracy of state government and applying for scholarships. They are not always happy with what I have to tell them, but they always appreciate that someone called them.

So far, nearly every one of these good people I’ve spoken to have lived outside of a metro area. When I pointed out this intriguing fact to my dedicated team members, they scratched their chins (individually, not each other’s chins, that would be weird… and a HR violation) and supported this idea.

Turns out, they, too, have noticed people outside of the urban centers are more likely to take their call.

I don’t know about you, but I can count on one hand the number of times I have accepted a call from an unknown number on my mobile telephone on purpose in the last 10 years. The cell phone companies have even figured out a way to help us out by conveniently labeling calls from unknown numbers as “Unknown Caller” or “No Caller ID” and my personal favorite, “Spam Risk,” which would be a great name for a Food Network cooking competition show sponsored by Hormel.

I said at the top I had a burning question, but the truth is, I have two: Do country people answer their phones more than city folk and if so, why?

I am old enough to remember a time when the only phones were attached to the wall, and if it rang, you answered it. As a marketer by training and education, I am obliged to point out that we are the ones who have ruined the telephone and are largely responsible for the reason no one answers their phone anymore.

This is particularly true during elections when candidates of all flavors call your personal mobile phone on repeat to remind you to vote or that their opponent hates puppies. Marketers notoriously kill useful communications channels.

It started with direct mail, moved on to telemarketing, killed radio, made sports on television unwatchable, deluged our email inboxes, infiltrated our texting apps, infected social media and soon will be intruding on our thoughts directly through microwaves or some newfangled technology. At least that’s my theory.

This is not a new problem. I’m sure people scratching out hieroglyphic missives on papyruses (payyri?) felt the same way when they suddenly started getting long-form letters delivered to them about the health benefits of turmeric with tiny pictures of pharaohs with rippling muscles and yellow powders.

Rather than study this too closely, though, I think I’ll just appreciate talking to strangers on the phone when I have the opportunity. As an extrovert, I generally like interacting with people, and I draw energy from each encounter. I sometimes miss the days when I was an old fashioned newspaper reporter calling people on the phone, most of whom did not want to talk to me, and trying to cajole them into telling me things that would sell more papers.

Maybe country folks just got something to say, and most of the time no one listens, especially us self-involved fancy people up here in the big city. I’m going to make it my personal mission henceforth that whenever I have the fleeting opportunity to interact with another human, I’m going to listen intently and do what I can to make their day brighter.

But I ain’t taking a “Spam Risk” call.