Yeah, why would anyone want to have a two minute phone conversation when they could exchange the same amount of information over 20 emails across three days?

I'll even slip in a passive aggressive, "this is why I prefer emails" or, "maybe next time you can just send me this"

Or they can't fucking write. I'm a programmer and many of my colleagues over the years have been entirely unable to form a coherent idea into a sentence or paragraph. For a lot of them, that's why they became programmers in the first place.

I often end up being a rubber duck.

Nine times out of ten it's the second one. I don't mind being a sounding board for some people, but so many sloppy thinkers just don't understand and don't want to make the effort.

If you have a male sounding voice and you are open and friendly and communicate well, gaming voice chats can be a good experience, depending on the game. Mostly they aren't, though.

Honestly today I'm mostly thinking "I have other shit to worry about, like the pie in the oven". Ain't nobody got time for worrying about phone calls

email is high bandwidth

I don't think the reasons you stated are about bandwidth, and considering writing an email is IMO more effort than explaining on a phone call and will take me longer, I'd argue phone calls are higher bandwidth than email - at least in one on one conversations, since things change when you want to inform multiple people.

Though of course what you listed is important, and it sucks when people refuse to write out basic details that you could come back to later or forward to somebody else.

I think my main problem is how disruptive it is to your focus. With text I can write a semi quick response then get back to what I was doing. Whereas a phone call requires me to drop everything and give a fellow human my full attention in realtime. It tends to drain my already small social battery.

The trick is to not respond for an hour and hope their next message is "nvm, fixed it"

6 years of tech support and I dread email troubleshooting because I know it will take two weeks and 13 exchanges before we can actually start troubleshooting.

I've worked as phone support for a year and I hate phonecalls even more.

I'd rather send an email with detailed steps and let people follow the instructions at their own pace. If they fail - remote.

Phonecalls are a weste of everyone's time.

You assume that you are talking to a competent person who has a real difficult problem, which is not the case in 95% of the time and they have some bullshit trivial thing that you already told them 5 times.

I'm with you on this. I prefer important conversations that require me to make a decision or remember something in writing. Just general conversation about what you got up to on weekend? Fine let's talk it out.

I understand so many more people prefer verbal communication because it's easier for them to not have to type or put their thoughts into written words. I just wish more of them understood that it's not the same for everyone and come to a compromise.

Okay, but this is less of a question and more of me having 10,000 choices to make that I'm not actually allowed to decide.

So can you just sit on the phone with me and tell me which buttons I can press without getting fired?

This is exactly what my dad does. "It's easier" means "I can't be bothered to spend five minutes figuring out what the question I really want to ask is, and write it out in a ten word text. So instead I'll ramble for fifteen minutes and hope you figure it out for me."

When people say "it's easier" they mean for them, not you.

You can just tell her that but noOOooo

Aww she just wants an outlet 🥲

Exactly this. If it wasn't confirmed in writing, it didn't happen.