A co-worker made a request yesterday that left me so flummoxed, I actually inquired why she would do such a thing.
She asked for my phone number.
I don't mind using the phone -- unlike my wife, who prefers to do just about anything else -- but I don't actually do it all that often. Most of my phone calls consist of these four activities:
1. Talking to my parents and grandmother Sunday nights.
2. Calling for pizza Tuesday nights.
3. Yelling at customer service reps.
4. Taking calls from the guys who work for me when I work at home.
And ever since my wife and I ditched our land lines last year in favor of iPhones (I previously had a flip-phone that I pretty much only used for emergencies, but the phone number is the same), not that many people even have my number, which is awesome since I rarely get interrupted at dinner.
However, that's not the reason her request threw me off, to the point where I was worried she was asking because she had some horrible news about work that she could only share on the phone.
It was because there are so many other ways she could reach me. We're friends on Facebook and follow each other on Twitter; in fact, she follows me on personal and work accounts. Why did she need my phone? It seemed so, dare I say ... retro.
As it turned out, she was on a Facebook group message I sent out about work to some of my co-workers earlier in the day, but she doesn't like those, so she wanted, not to talk to me, but to text me about it ... another relatively modern contrivance (at least by my standards) that I never did until I got the new phone and my wife showed me how easy it was.
Instead, she sent me an individual message on Facebook ...
... and I did eventually give her my number.
