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Joined: 10/11/2007
Posts: 98
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Do you ever call, with the intent to leave a missed call? Do you think it’s bad form not to leave a message?
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Joined: 5/5/2008
Posts: 1
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Many years ago, I attended a university that maintained a rather strict honor code. I recall an issue like this one surfacing, where my classmates would place a collect call to home, specifically for (say) their dog. Parents would answer, refuse the call, but knowing full well that the "call for the dog" was the code for "got here safe & sound."
At the end of the day, the administration called the practice dishonorable--not so much for the "missed call" aspect, but because of the misrepresentation (that the call WAS for someone who was not there), and that there was a "cheating" aspect (to use services without paying for them) to the practice.
This question raises some interesting issues about what we communicate when we "Don't Communicate." In fact, we can never not communicate--if silence can speak volumes, to what do partial-communications speak? Intent? Fear? Insolence? Second Thoughts? And should we decide to "infer" from the missed call, what slippery slope do we descend?
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Joined: 12/11/2007
Posts: 2
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I work at a job that involves dozens of calls a day to both home and mobile phones. Until I read the article, I had no inkling of why people would bother to call a strange number and find out what the caller wanted. My own position is that if someone is too busy to leave voice mail, I'm too busy to return the call -- backed up by the premise that if they didn't leave a message they probably changed their mind anyway.
This article may explain part of that. Thanks.
As to the ethics, it's not up to me to dictate them for others, and they don't apply in my case since I have unlimited calling. There was a time, in the days of landline long distance, when one of us might call home collect and ask for himself, that being the signal that the folks were to call us back so that they would absorb the charges. I see no ethical problem with that, since eventually the teleco gets its pound of flesh anyway.
At the rates charged in the US for things like SMS, as opposed to Europe, it's amazing that beeping isn't more prevalent here. Perhaps it is, and old folks like me just don't know about it.
Thanks for an interesting read, both the excerpt and the linked article.
Bill
http://digital-dharma.net
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