Phones are shit.
Not just mobile phones, although they are the fucking worst. Landline phones as well. All phones. They are shit. And I hate the bastard things.
It's difficult enough to understand and follow a conversation face to face. Processing speech in real time, and generating responses in real time, is really fucking hard. I cannot fucking handle real-time two-way conversation. I need plenty of time to process what the other person has said and make sense of it, and then to generate an appropriate response. It is not something that "comes naturally", it is something that requires a fuck load of mental effort. And even then it is very likely to achieve an unacceptable error rate.
It is even more fucking difficult on a phone. Not just the tinny muffled voice that is never loud enough, but also the absence of the opportunity to do subconscious lip-reading or whatever it is that makes it easier to pick the words up face to face. And on top of that, there is some additional confusing factor which makes it even harder than it usually is to work out what the words mean. The result is that I end up not having a fucking clue what is going on and can't understand a bastard thing.
Incoming phone calls are even worse, because they happen without warning in the middle of something completely different, they give no fucking indication whatsoever of who is on the other end or what they actually want, and there is no way to prepare for the conversation by calling to mind anything relevant on the subject because there's no warning of what it's going to be. They call for an instant context switch without actually providing the context to switch into, and it is not possible to switch into a blank context and then load up the details on the fly afterwards because it takes 100% CPU just to even try (and fail) to understand what the fuck is going on.
And the whole problem is hugely exacerbated by the shitey fucking attitude other people have to the bastard things. They all think they're the greatest thing ever and insist on using them as the primary means of communication no matter what. The idea that the communication will not be successful because they are using a phone is totally unknown to them. Which is fucking ridiculous. I know very well that I am far from being the only person who can't process speech properly; there are loads of other people who can't do it either, and there are several medical terms for all the various different causes and manifestations of the problem. And even if people can't understand that sort of thing, what about deaf people? Everyone does know that there exist deaf people, who, never mind not being able to process speech, can't even bloody hear it in the first place. So it ought to be flaming bloody obvious that there exist people who can't sensibly use a fucking phone, and people who are fixated on the cunting things ought to fucking well realise that.
But the fucking wankers don't. Once someone once gets their hands on a phone number they take that as the be-all and end-all of communication and insist on trying to use the fucking thing exclusively no matter what other options may be available. They won't even acknowledge, most of the time, that those other options even exist. They do all they possibly can to force me to quote my phone number and won't be satisfied with an email address instead. Fucksake the only reason I even have a fucking phone line at all is so that I can get broadband on it. And the only time I ever use its voice communication function is to ring up my ISP when the broadband fucks up. Most months my phone bill has no calls listed on it at all and is for the line rental only.
A particular case in point is my doctor's surgery. Yes, the fucking doctors. You'd think that if anyone would understand that there exist people for whom telephones are not a practical option it would be a bunch of doctors. But what actually happens is they're even worse than usual. It is completely impossible to get in touch with them by email. They have a website, but there is no email address listed on it. There isn't even one of those shitty web contact forms that so often don't fucking work anyway. There is fuck all. And it is the same the other way round. I have tried to give them my email address so they can get in touch with me but they won't accept it. They haven't even got any means of recording it. They do have my postal address, but they won't fucking use that either. They made such a fuss about insisting on a phone number and refusing to register me if I didn't provide one that I ended up giving them my parents' number. So what happens if they want to get in touch with me is they phone my parents and my parents then email me to pass the message on. And if I want to get in touch with them it means walking all the way to the surgery, which is a pain in the arse because as well as being a long way there is a big hill and I can't breathe well enough to take in sufficient oxygen to ascend it at more than a snail's pace. It still beats the fucking phone though.
Then there are the cunt websites that insist on making "phone number" a required field on their bloody forms so I can't just leave it blank. If I'm lucky there is no validation, or very little, so I can get away with putting in 00000000000, or in exceptional cases actual text like "Do not phone me" or "N/A". All too often, however, doing such things results in a snotty message about the number being invalid.
Invalid fucking wank bollocks dribbling runny shite. If I give them a valid phone number it will make things worse, not better. Because once they have it they will insist upon using it to the exclusion of all else and then freaking out and acting the fucking arse when they don't get an answer from it. It is impossible to avoid such problems by telling them not to use it because they never take any fucking notice. The only way that works is to not give them the fucking number in the first place, and these stupid bastard websites that block that option are just creating a totally unnecessary problem which otherwise would not exist.
What the fuck is their fucking problem that they are so insistent on being given a fucking phone number? They're a fucking website, for fuck's sake, you'd think a phone number would be an afterthought, and certainly not a necessity. It's not as if they don't have a field to enter my email address. They do, mostly. But the email address is usually not a required field, and on occasion isn't there at all, while the phone number is always there and it's a lucky day indeed if the cunting thing is not a required field. Fucking cunts.
So what usually happens is I end up having to put my phone number in because it won't let me leave it blank and it rejects dummy numbers, and then using any "comment" or "additional information" fields to put "DO *NOT* PHONE ME, USE THE EMAIL ADDRESS" or something of the kind. Which the stupid bastards, if they do need to get in touch with me, NEVER take any fucking notice of, and phone me anyway. Of course, they do not get an answer. So then what do they do? Do they use the email address I have given them? Do they fucking arse. They just phone me again, and again, and again, and when they never get an answer they still don't try emailing me. Instead they think something is wrong and start fucking up whatever service it was that had me filling in the form in the first place. Fucking wankers, assuming something must be wrong at my end because they can't get an answer on the fucking phone. Yeah, something is fucking wrong, and it's at their fucking end. It's their fucking dipshits being too flaming bloody stupid to realise that when I put "DO *NOT* PHONE ME, USE THE EMAIL ADDRESS" I do actually mean that they should not fucking phone me but should send me an email instead. Fucksake. Do they think I typed that just to amuse myself or something? Does it not occur to them that I typed it for an actual reason and therefore when they don't get an answer on the fucking phone it is simply what they should have expected in the first place? And what the pissing fuck is it with them trying to run an internet-based operation but acting as if internet-based communication does not exist?
The worst fucking cunts of the lot out of this class of fucking cunts are the stupid fucking pieces of festering flyblown shit that insist on a mobile number, validate it sufficiently thoroughly that a landline number won't work, and refuse to function without the sodding thing. For fuck's sake, I DO NOT HAVE A FUCKING MOBILE PHONE. It's the absolute LAST thing I fucking want. Landlines are bad enough and I only have one of them so I can get broadband. There is no fucking WAY I am going to get a fucking mobile, when they are even more difficult to understand and follow a conversation on than a landline, and even more likely to go off at shitty fucking times and force me to do a context switch which I can't cope with. Sometimes it is possible to get round this by googling for those "mobile" numbers which copy all the text messages they receive to a publically-accessible web page, but some of them are sufficiently enormous fucking cunts that they check for and reject these numbers as well, and the only way to use the stupid shits is to buy a 99p PAYG SIM from a corner shop, stick it in a 3G modem, activate the cunt website with it, and then throw it away. Fucking load of fucking shite.
FUCK OFF WITH YOUR FUCKING PHONES. FUCK OFF WITH YOUR REQUIRED PHONE NUMBER FIELDS. FUCK OFF WITH YOUR SHITTY FUCKING INSISTENCE ON TRYING TO TALK TO ME WHEN I WON'T BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND AND IT WILL JUST DO MY HEAD IN AND CONFUSE THE FUCK OUT OF ME. FUCK OFF TREATING ME LIKE SHIT FOR NO FUCKING REASON JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN'T SPEAK TO ME ON THE FUCKING PHONE. I DON'T USE PHONES. I CAN'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND CONVERSATIONS ON FUCKING PHONES. I DON'T ANSWER THE FUCKING PHONE. FUCK THE FUCKING PHONE. FOR FUCK'S SAKE USE EMAIL YOU FUCKING MASSIVE PIECES OF SHIT.
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