Gonna be a rant today, Gentle Blogreader. So bear with me.

I’ve come to the conclusion that when conveying detail specific information texting wins out over talking.

I know a lot of people who hate texting, but I prefer it over phone calls 95+% of the time.

Here’s the back story…

I left very precise message at an office yesterday morning.

I was calling for someone else and the office needed the someone else’s name and birth date to look up the account.

Here’s what I said, minus the juicy stuff about the exact situation…

“My name is Kathy Getto. I’m calling about So-And-So. His birth date is MM/DD/YY. He is an established client of your firm. He was ‘here I explained the situation in less than 10 words.’ Please call me back at ###-####. Again I’m Kathy Getto calling for the client So-And-So , Date of Birth MM/DD/YY and my phone number is ###-####.”

I left the message at 8:15 a.m.

At 11:30 a.m. I called another phone number at the office to try to get a clue as to what the status of my request was. While I was talking with one person, another person from the office called me back.

She said, “You can’t come see us because we’ve never seen you before. You have to get a referral from another office.” She was microseconds from hanging up when I blurted out, “Wait a minute…”

Then I went through my speech again. Then she said, “Oh, OK!” And she proceeded to help me.

Here’s what I think happened earlier in the day:

She, along with the rest of us, multitasked and didn’t  pay attention to the task at hand.

As she listened to my message,  she was probably reading an email, drinking her coffee, and watching five other phone lines light up with additional phone calls.

How the heck COULD she actually pay attention to my message while juggling at least three other tasks.

I think we’re all guilty of doing, or at least attempting to do, other things while we’re on the phone.  Driving, reading, watching TV, etc…

We’re a multitasking nation! Especially American women. And we’re proud of it! 🙂

But think about it…

When you’re reading a text you’re doing just that. Reading the text. If you start doing something else, you’re no longer reading the text.

Make sense?

That’s why I’m convinced that I would not have had the trouble I had had I been able to text my request to the office. My information would have been in black and white. She would have scanned for the key words (shown in red) important for her to do her job.

“My name is Kathy Getto. I’m calling about So-And-So. His birth date is MM/DD/YY. He is an established client of your firm. He was ‘here I explained the situation in less than 10 words.’ Please call me back at ###-####. Again I’m Kathy Getto calling for the client So-And-So , Date of Birth MM/DD/YY and my phone number is ###-####.”

Well, maybe not. Maybe she would have only read the first and last few words.

“My name is Kathy Getto. I’m calling about So-And-So. His birth date is MM/DD/YY. He is an established client of your firm. He was ‘here I explained the situation in less than 10 words.’ Please call me back at ###-####. Again I’m Kathy Getto calling for the client So-And-So , Date of Birth MM/DD/YY and my phone number is ###-####.”

So I’m probably wrong.

But I do know that for someone who’s phone phobic like me, I would rather have spent the morning TEXTING rather than TELEPHONING! 🙂