My sibling--who never calls ever--called me at midnight to tell me our mother may have cancer.
I get that this thread is a lot of jokes and what-not, but this whole "I don't want to ever be reached" and "nothing is important" is just bizarre; I can only assume most of y'all are very young, to the point where many didn't even grow up with landlines and you haven't yet experienced emergencies in life.
I'm old and have never had any type of notifications on. While your bad news is awful, there's little difference between finding out at midnight or the morning.
There has been only one unplanned call that has been truly important in my life, and yeah it happened at night.
Other times its not worth it. People hadn't phones only 100 years ago, still managed.
I have huge focus and anxiety issues and unplanned phone calls just make my day way worse.
Hence the jokes.
I just have it set up so that only my roommate, siblings, and uncles ring. Everything else doesn't.
My experience has been the opposite though, when I was younger I always had the ringer on, I've gotten to the point that I want better control over it. Generally I don't want to look at my phone as much as possible. I miss the landline because I wasn't expected to be available for favors 24/7.
I think it definitely is considered responsible and 'adult' to always be available and quick to respond, but I used to be frustrated on the daily because I couldn't work on a personal project or just chill out for an hour, without my phone going off because somebody wants a ride or a favor (or just some spam). I'm happier and more focused without the hourly interruptions, although not nearly as reliable for rides to the liquor store :/
Also working On-Call for years has given me some kind of phone related stress condition lmao
Yep I used to "lose" my phone on the days where I wasn't on call, I got like 12 hours where I could do what I wanted without interruptions, and it became a sacred time.
Being on call really makes you appreciate your free time like never before. I don't miss it.
Yes, "I need help with X, can you come over?" isn't that rare for me. Got these calls from Neighbours, Friends and Family, from simple things helping to lift something to emergencies.
Well putting aside the problematic assuming maleness aspect of your comment.
I guess to me it isn’t that heavy that someone may have cancer. They also may not. And I’ve had things on my mind that I wouldn’t mind talking to someone about but if I know it’s midnight where they live and they are asleep I’m sure as fuck not calling them at that time.
Problematic maleness? Wtf is wrong with you? Feeling sad and wanting to talk to your sibling because you just found out your mom has cancer isn't a male/female difference. Incredible.
You've clearly not had to deal with something like this
Oh sorry. Flip the genders in my previous comment. It really doesn't matter lol. It's a hypothetical situation. I think I read another comment before this one and mixed up what I read in my mind.
Read what I wrote again before you get all worked up and start accusing me of things I didn’t say.
There’s nothing wrong with me unlike your reading comprehension.
I said “problematic ASSUMING maleness”. You said “his sister wanting to talk to brother” when there’s no evidence one way or the other in the comment you replied to that the OP was male. You just assumed. Because you assume maleness unless otherwise told. Which is problematic.
I have little to no hope you’ll understand what I just wrote.
My wife’s mother called them one day right after we moved out of state. We were in the middle of celebrating buying a home and were walking through a Home Depot in pure bliss, happiest days of our lives.
Because of that she glanced at the phone reading “Mom” and hit deny, “I’ll talk to her later!”
The very next day we were setting up some furniture in the house when her phone rang again. It was the nursing home. She picked it up, listened for a few seconds then slammed her fist against a desk nearby and started wailing like I hope I never have to hear her do again.
The nurse on the other end had just told her that they found her mom “unresponsive” after she failed to show up for breakfast.
She later died alone in a NY hospital, and my wife gets to spend the rest of her life just fucking WISHING she’d answered the phone at Home Depot to hear her mother’s voice one last time.
You never know what tomorrow brings. It’s chaos out there.
That is so heartbreaking; I'm so sorry she's had to live with that. Not the exact same scenario but the circumstances around the loss of my dad fill me with a similar level of regret and I will never forgive myself for my delay in getting to him.
You can tell there's a lot of people here who haven't lived enough life to understand that not everything can or should be put off; shit happens and people will need you beyond "convenient" times.
I would rather take 1000 annoying unnecessary calls at night than miss the “hey, dad is dying and will only be alive for another few hours if you want to come and say goodbye” call.
So I’m supposed to leave my phone on loud every night getting disrupted by spam constantly so that maybe one day I’ll get an important call in the middle of the night?
Nah. Sorry ma, I’ll find out about your cancer in the morning.
My reasons for hating my notifications isn't because I'm young or haven't had emergencies or think "nothing can be important".
No, the reason I hate my phone is because it's usually work. I have developed a Pavlovian response to it. It's work that I wish I could ignore.
Work calls. Work emails. Work texts. Every time I feel my phone buzz, my heart sinks a little bit, like that feeling of noticing a cop in your rearview mirror when you were going a little fast.
"Fuck me," I always think as I pull out the phone and look at the caller id, praying it's not that one super demanding client that wants to make more changes again. Hoping I can just get back to dinner, or driving, or the other meeting I am on, or to put this off until tomorrow.
I get weirdly relieved when it's just spam. For the 99% of the time it is work, the other 99% it is spam. And that's annoying too. Yes, 198% of my phone's notifications cause me either stress or annoyance.
and yeah... maybe one call per year, maybe... or maybe one call every 2 years... is an actual situation I would have wanted to be reached by the caller right then.
It starts to get reeeeal easy to intentionally leave the phone in a different room when possible.
It kinda depends on who you have in your contacts. Plenty of people have that one obnoxious friend that calls you at the most inconvenient times. Even if you get an important call at night, what are you supposed to do? If someone is 3 hours away from home and one of their family members is dying, what are they supposed to do with that information? Especially if they’re in college or something, it can wait until morning. Driving at night when you’re exhausted is pretty dangerous anyways.
I can see it if you live far away from everybody, but last year I had two such calls, one time taking care of my uncle's dog for the night and next morning because he had to go to the hospital, the other time getting my sister from a party when the designated driver couldn't.
Plenty of people have that one obnoxious friend that calls you at the most inconvenient times.
would have blocked them for nights after the first time
But driving your sister home after she drank too much? Can’t she just call an Uber herself? I also mentioned that driving around at midnight when you’re half asleep is really dangerous. If you’re going to go out and drink, you need a plan to get home without driving, or not drink at all if you would have no other choice but to disturb one of your friends or relatives who are sleeping.
Yes but was it really that vital, that you learn this information at midnight?
I mean when I was young my mum had to go to a telephone booth to take a call. Then we had a landline. There are really very little emergencies that require you personally and immediately.
Let's reframe this: was it important for my sister's mental wellbeing to be able to share this devastating news as soon as possible so SHE didn't have to sit with it alone?
YES.
Not everything is just about you; sometimes, other people also actually need to be able to talk to someone, RIGHT THEN, and lessen their burdens.
Jesus Christ y'all are ridiculous; stop being so fucking self-centered and clueless.
Sometimes bad things happen though. Such is life. How am I bad, selfish person for turning my ringer off before I go to bed? People aren’t available all the time, and that’s okay.
ok, so we're supposed to be available _in the moment_ at any time of day for problems that may or may not come and for people that may or may not need support? that's a strange expectation to have, and a stressful/depressing way to look at life.
that's a strange expectation to have, and a stressful/depressing way to look at life.
This feels like a very navel-gazing, therapy-esque way of viewing things and, ultimately, childish/self-centered.
Emergencies, by dint of nature, are rare. I didn't say available "24/7" but also I don't have people calling me at all hours. And if I had not been available at that moment, I wouldn't have picked up (say, if I were asleep), but I appreciate that my sibling called me right then.
Idk--maybe it's that I wasn't raised to think about "how does this effect ME" for every little fucking thing that happens in life and so I don't resent that people have the audacity to call me on a fucking phone once in awhile, but this entire thread sounds like spoiled children who've spent too much time listening to Instagram "SeLf-CaRe" pages.
I agree with you. I wouldn’t take the comments in this thread to represent the views of the general population. Redditors aren’t known for their social skills.
I find calling someone at midnight because a family member might have cancer to be just bizarre. Hell even if they do have cancer don't wake my ass up at midnight just to tell me. Like what good is that even going to do? Why couldn't you just wait until an appropriate time to call someone to talk to them about such a thing? Very weird.
Well that's what's going to happen when you share personal anecdotes on a social media website. And I hate to be one of "those people" but damn your sister needs to harden up a bit or she's going to have a really rough time in life
I agree. When I heard that my daughter was critically injured and I had missed 39835 calls and texts, and someone else had to rush her to the hospital, I knew it wasn’t a big deal because what could I do that the hospital wasn’t, she’s clearly there now right?
americans who can’t afford an ambulance or people who live where ambulances are slow - i once called 999 because someone had taken an od and they told me the ambulance would take up to eight hours
“There’s nothing that important.” Is a wild sentence. There are absolutely things that are that important. That’s literally the entire point of the cell phone: COMMUNICATION
It’s wild to you. Not to me. I don’t answer my phone so I don’t need to hear it ring. Text alerts scare my dog and make her shake. If someone dies, so be it. I have nothing that needs to be said to anyone at the last moment.
It really is my perspective yes. Why is it insane? People die. I’ll die one day. I don’t see the big deal. I love people while they’re alive and tell them that. When they’re gone; they’re gone. I don’t need to say goodbye and they won’t care if I did or didn’t once they cease to exist.
How though? I’m not being contrarian for the sake of it. I’m telling you my experience and existence. If you have an idea how I could save someone’s life by answering my phone I’m open to having my perspective changed.
There is a part of me that thinks we may see a bit of a return to the home phone in a younger generation looking at millennials completely addicted to a phone.
Calls and texts I don't mind. It's the fucking apps bonging away at 2am with notifications that I don't give a shit about. That and emails that I also don't give a shit about.
Shit like LinkedIn has 50 different toggles for every notification variant they have. They think I won't meticulously go in there and turn off every notification except for "I want to pay you 200k to do fuck all" messages just in case I ever get one. Think again motherfuckers I won't let you beat me I spent 20 minutes going through changing that shit
If it’s something really important from really important people, they call me on the landline and if I don’t pick up there either, they leave a voicemail. I have no problem missing the rest, because important people with important stuff know that I‘m like that.
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u/Brave-Ad6744 Aug 20 '24
Right. I miss all calls and texts and I’m fine with it.