Telephone Terror

A complaint from both hack and flak bosses about their underlings: the young people are afraid of the telephone.

They think a WhatsApp or a tweet will suffice, when they should be in the business of building relationships.

Even if your romantic relationships start online, for them to become actually romantic, you have to meet and talk to people in person, one flak has taken to telling his juniors. Work is the same.

Hacks moan about calls from junior flaks, but since we are, or should be, perpetually bothering people who absolutely don’t want to speak to us, it seems unfair of us to complain too much.

(Ok, here’s my complaint to the junior flak: when you ring me, it is always on a deadline you should know about. When I ring you, you don’t answer.)

During lockdown there were far fewer calls back and forth, and maybe that seemed comfortable for many of us.

In the FT, Pilita Clark reports that the PR cold call is back and it’s worse than ever.

She complains at a call from flak called James to discuss “a topic so dull I cannot remember it”. How dare he? Where does he get the gall?

She agrees this is an overreaction. And I guess the only way for calls to stop being cold is to make a lot of them.

One impact of lockdown must be that landlines are used less often (I have no idea what my office number is anymore.)

When I occasionally check my office voicemail, it seems to be full of messages from people who were hoping I wouldn’t answer. They left a message; they ticked a box. And they didn’t have to actually speak to anyone.

Perhaps young folk being afraid of the phone is good for the continued employment of the old gits.

The flaks (and hacks) who use the phone and read the newspapers are miles better at their jobs than the ones that do not.