Phonettiquette

[fun-et-ih-cut] the word mash of phone & ettiiquitte combined.
Miriam Lai 2010

What a dork. I just quoted my own, freshly coined word. [8
Someone urbandictionary it!
But yes, Monday night the phone rang, and it went a little like this:

Me: Hello?

Caller: Is Gerard there?

[WHAT!? No 'hello', 'good evening', no 'may I' or 'please'?]

Me: [elongated; somewhat lightly pressing] y-essssssss..[+emphasis] MAY I PLEASE ask who's calling?

Caller: Uh it's Mike.

...

Here in words.. I guess looking at it it seems pretty petty and somewhat insignifcant, but at the time it really really irritated me! I mean, you can at least show minimal respect to the phone receiver right? After all, they are the connection to the party, I mean, person in line (yeah anyone get that (bad) p!nk reference? D;).

And it's just.. genral courtesy, it doesn't hurt to be polite, right? P's and Q's people, P's and Q's!! (As I child, I never underestood the line "mind your p's and q's" but since then I can only infer that it's referring to Please (P) and Thank-You's (Thank Q).

Needless to say I passed the phone onto my brother and didn't bother to lower my tone and informed him a very impolite friend who needs to learn phone ettiquette was on the line. Possibly not the best way to remind someone the ways of phonettiquette, but he had to hear it, right?


Lo and behold, this was only the beginning of my dealings with bad phonettitquette yet.
The next day, I received a text message from a friend I was supposed to see that day, a one liner comprising something along the lines of "Can we meet up tomorrow instead."

No apology. No explanation. With the history this particular somebody and I share, I sent a response, equally blunt. "Are you dying? I want to hear this explanation." But no phonecall ensued. Just a text. "Sorry forgot I already organised stuff with another friend."

Is it fair of me to have expcted a call or explanation? Said friend had been sick last we were supposed to meet, so bailed, and had promised to 'make it up to me.' He'd been telling me how keen he was to meet me, yet had not one day initiated a time nor place. So of course I was disappointed, annoyed, mega frustrated. I had set aside this time out of my day, and he couldn't even call to explain? At this, I took the liberty to be the bigger person, -perhaps he's low on phone credit, or something, you know? I texted him to call me again. When he didn't, I called him, but was met with an ongoing dial tone until it rang out. Once. Twice. Thrice. After everything, we spoke yesterday and he claims he 'wasn't at his phone'. This, in my opinion was simply no consolation. A text to notify later on or a return call would have sufficed enough. Heck, I'm all for benefit of the doubt and forgiveness. But this isn't the first time. Far from it.

At the heart of the matter, he had the cheek to call ME a bad friend. A rude friend. And a friend who doesn't tell him anything, anymore. ... [insert deep metaphoric quote that is on the tip of my tongue but is refusing to budge.]

Anyway. All I can think of is that the ratio of giving and ratio is way out of whack and is setting this waaaaay out of balance on the scales of Friendship.


Your thoughts?

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It's now Sunday and I have just returned to and finished this post after starting it on Tuesday evening
Since then, I have celebrated the 20th anniversary of my birth, amongst many other excitingly exciting things such as packing for my upcoming family trip overseas!!

Please anticipate upcoming photos and blogdates! Much love, Happy Sunday (:
Mizziam

Oh, and thank you to my dearest friend Kaila who introduced this song to me a long while back.
Incidentally, being my birthday recently I recalled it's song title and have barely stopped playing it since!

Bon Appetit! <3