29. Drop Call Waiting

I know not everyone will agree with me on this issue, but I can think of few “conveniences” of the modern phone age that are more irritating than the contrivance “call waiting.” Not only is this system a rude form of interruption, but people who have it have to pay for it. And of course, if you have call waiting, the telephone company wants you to believe you also have to have—for a couple dollars more per month—the service known as “cancel call waiting”; and if you have that, you also have to have—for another couple dollars more per month—“priority call waiting.”

Have we so lost touch with the art of communication that we can’t just come directly out and say, “Excuse me, can I call you later? I’m expecting an important call now”? Or, perhaps more accurately, “Sorry, but there is someone else I’d rather be talking to.” Are the phone calls we’re receiving today so vital that we can’t be satisfied with having just one call in progress, but we have to have two? Have our schedules gotten so out of control that we have to pay the phone company to keep us in line?

For small businesses that want to avoid the added expense of multiple phone lines, call waiting can perhaps be justified. But I can’t believe that juggling two phone calls on the same line at the same time has ever made anyone’s personal life simpler. If you agree, you can cancel this “service” and save approximately five dollars per month on your phone bill.