Let's not do a quick call

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who believe a fat lot of good will come out of a quick call. And those who don’t. I’m firmly in the second category and my Number One Problem with the quick call is that it’s seldom quick.

First, the person who suggests the quick call (it’s never me) is using the adjective ‘quick’ because they want you to think this is something you actually want to do. It is more efficient than email. It will take very, very little of your time. It will barely disrupt your schedule. It will be like a butterfly flitting in and flitting out of your room before you know it. So pleasant and harmless.

But those who have been on enough quick calls in their lifetime know that the quick call is actually like an obese pigeon that flies in through the window, slams around cluelessly, upsets everything that you’re doing, and wastes your time with its buffoonery.

‘Why couldn’t this pigeon have been an email?’ I find myself thinking at the end of most quick calls. The only quick call I want to have is with my husband when he’s out buying groceries. ‘Quick, grab the pudina!’ I tell him. ‘Quick, we are out of tomatoes!’ ‘Quick, if you don’t bring the garlic now, the biriyani will suck!’ He just says ‘Yes’ and we hang up. This is an example of a quick call that’s actually efficient.

I don’t understand the point of a quick call otherwise. If you ‘quickly’ want to explain something regarding work, won’t it just be easier to type it on email so we both have a record of what you want done? You have a smartphone, I have a smartphone. You have email, I have email. The problem is, people who want to do quick calls seldom think through what they want to say and they start doing the thinking on the call — which is, frankly speaking, a bit of a bore.

They also tell you a lot of irrelevant things because it is expected of a conversation.

On email, you don’t have to ask me what’s going on, and I don’t have to wonder how to respond to that. We don’t have to make jokes and pretend to laugh to establish rapport. We don’t have to ask about each other’s kids and things we don’t really give a damn about. Sometimes, when a ‘quick’ call person asks me how I am, I feel like giving them a laundry list of complaints about my life just so they’d realise an email would have been better. My neck feels stiff. I woke up at 5 am today because of a power cut. My left eye is slightly pink. I only have dal rice for lunch. Not even a pappadam.

If you live in a place where the phone signal isn’t great, the quick call involves marching up and down the house screaming, ‘Can you hear me now? Can you hear me NOW? NOWWW? Can you just email me for the love of god please?’

Honestly, I find the quick call to be devious. Any other kind of call, you are supposed to fix a time with the person and call them. You have to find out if this proposed call will be convenient for them. But with the quick call, you are saying you want to do it right away and the other person looks like a crabby fusspot if they refuse because after all, it’s just a quick call. 

The quick call strategy is also used when you tell the other person that you are on holiday or are out somewhere enjoying yourself. They j-u-s-t need two minutes of your time, so why should you resent that? So what if you are on your deathbed and trying to eat one last grape? Why should a harmless quick call come in the way?

I know that part of the reason people insist on a quick call is that it’s easy to ignore an email. You want to be assured that the other person will respond. You imagine that they will immediately drop everything and do your bidding. You picture them parachuting from a cafe to their laptop that’s buried under a pile of laundry at home. They dig it out and start working at once. This visual gives you great comfort. You feel like you’ve moved mountains. You tick it off your to-do list with a sense of accomplishment. You write a LinkedIn post about it. You imagine Netflix or Amazon Prime making an anthology film with five directors who ought to have retired on the subject. Quick Call Chennai. Quick Call Pune. Quick Call Mumbai. An exploration of how quick calls do wonderful things in different cities and spread joy. 

You have to understand though that people who ignore your emails but oblige the quick call request have no intention of doing the job any sooner. They are only obliging because it’s an easy way to get you off their back. They are quick call playing you. If you play pigeon, they play cat. 

My friend N and I have known each other since college. That’s a good 19 years. We have written three books together, and she has illustrated three other books of mine. Do you know how many quick calls we’ve done over the years to discuss work? Zero. That’s because N detests the quick call as much as I do. She’s my bitching buddy for all quick call related problems. We tell each other about all the people who want to get on quick calls with us and how it ruined our entire day. We don’t make quick calls to each other to talk about these quick calls. We send WhatsApp messages. If it is a lengthy report on a quick call, we email. True story.

For those who vehemently disagree with everything I've said, I will tell you in a language you will understand: Upskill yourself and write emails. Let's explore our synergy there. Only there.