My Anti-social Generation

I never liked to talk to strangers on the phone.  When my mom would ask me to do something simple like order pizza, I would push the task on somebody else.  I was intensely shy as a child, often hiding under a blanket when my parent's friends would come over, so that's my excuse. I decided the task of talking on the phone was a task for adults, so I refused to do it as a small, corruptible child.  I never managed to grow out of it.  I will now call strangers when absolutely necessary, but I will make excuses to put it off - like my preceptor probably isn't working on a Friday afternoon, so I better wait and call on Monday. As I started living with my peers in college, and now in medical school, I found out that I'm not the only one.  

Even my social friends will avoid talking to some whiney, acne-afflicted teen working the phones at the local Domino's.  My college roommate, Anna-liisa, admitted that she didn't like phone interactions anymore than I did.  Abby, my med school roommate, and I will exclusively order from Papa John's pizza because their online ordering allows the least stranger interaction as possible.  Anna-liisa pointed out when I was home for spring break that it's our whole generation.  We hate talking on the phone.  You know that's got to be the main reason Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan have assistants.  It's not all of us - when I was younger I could assign phone tasks to my less intimidated friend Brittany, and Mariam will always volunteer to call a retail store to explain their transgressions against her and to demand discounts.  But even Brittany has recently pushed awkward phone conversations to me.

I wonder if the main culprit here is the internet.  When we were finally old enough to talk to strangers, the web started to explode with information, eliminating the need to investigate by phone.  That can't be the only problem here though because I am never hesitant to ask for what I want in a restaurant or from a sales person at the store.  Maybe it's that my generation needs to be in control of what they are provided, and wants to eliminate the need to depend directly on another person to get their order right.  I was forced to overcome most of my phone phobia when I started working at the testing company Kaplan.  I had to call students when they were halfway through their test preparation classes to ask them if they were satisfied with their experience.  I hated the task, and I had a feeling that many of the students I called, also part of my generation, hated the phone calls as much as I did.  I could here some of their exasperation over the phone, with a tone of voice that implied you're taking me away from my very busy schedule of smoking pot and watching South Park. I think it will be telling if this trend continues into the next generation.  As this series of tubes that is the internet gets bigger and bigger, hopefully the silly need to talk to strangers will be eliminated.

--By Farrah, who switched over to Apple during spring break... that's right, she's a "new soul in this very strange world"