{"id":289,"date":"2025-05-18T14:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T14:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davidthelocksmith.com\/blog\/?p=289"},"modified":"2025-05-27T14:05:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T14:05:48","slug":"making-contact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidthelocksmith.com\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/05\/18\/making-contact\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Contact"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>At 42 I feel old and out of touch. Communicating with my customers is half of my job, and I\u2019m constantly thinking I no longer understand the basic rules of electronic communication. My interactions leave me wondering if the entire ruleset has been rewritten, or if people simply don\u2019t have manners anymore. I\u2019m beginning to believe that it could be some of both, and that certain old politenesses just don\u2019t apply anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have this notion that method of contact matters. In my mind&#8211;and it could be that that\u2019s the only place where this idea resides&#8211;there\u2019s a generally accepted hierarchy of urgency for the different ways you might contact someone. From least to most urgent, here they are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>email &#8211; We send these with the understanding that the recipient might wait until he\u2019s at his computer to answer. With the benefit of a keyboard and full-sized screen he can craft a well-considered response.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>texting &#8211; This demands a more prompt reply. It\u2019s often written in shorthand and it pops up on our screens over whatever else we might have been looking at. There isn\u2019t an expectation that a text would warrant a thorough well-written reply. The idea is that at the recipient\u2019s first opportunity he should look at the message and send a short reply or acknowledgment of receipt.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>calling &#8211; This requires the most immediacy. Talking is usually the most efficient communication method when you need to have an exchange that will involve some back and forth. A phone call is a request to have that back and forth right now.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Although this is my understanding, people do things that leave me questioning it all the time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They\u2019ll call or text me at night or on a Sunday about the least urgent projects. Occasionally they\u2019ll pretend they didn\u2019t expect me to pick up the phone or answer the text at these hours, but they\u2019re surely glad when I do. Who calls a business hoping not to reach someone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes a property manager will send me an urgent work request by email, telling me a tenant is standing outside of his locked apartment and asking if I can help right away. Usually I see these emails hours after they were sent, as email is low on my priority list when I\u2019m hustling from one job to the next. I ask why they didn\u2019t call or text me, since it was urgent. What\u2019s the difference, they say. The text message goes to your phone in your pocket and beeps. The email goes to your phone in your pocket and beeps. Check your phone when it beeps.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is that really the expectation? Am I supposed to check the device every time it beeps, chirps, or buzzes at me? It makes two hundred noises a day. How will I ever get through a task?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then customers contact me through WhatsApp. I downloaded that app to talk to old friends in other countries. Now it\u2019s flooded with correspondence from customers. I didn\u2019t see that coming.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other times people want to text me for a quote on a complicated project that requires a long volley of questions and answers. It will start with, \u201cHow much to change a lock?\u201d This is like asking a mechanic, \u201cHow much to fix a car?\u201d I\u2019ve read that you\u2019re supposed to respond to people\u2019s queries using the same medium that they use to contact you. But I don\u2019t want to play a complicated game of twenty questions over text message, stretched across a day and a half, when the same thing could be accomplished with a five-minute phone conversation. Am I expected to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And what\u2019s this with young people being afraid to make phone calls? I used to do after-hours lockout calls in a big modern apartment building downtown. Frequently the young resident and I needed to contact a friend or neighbor inside the building to give us access to their floor so we could get to the unit door that I was going to open. I always wanted to get them in and go home as quickly as possible, but the customer would pull out their phone and start typing a text. Not wishing to wait around while a text message went unnoticed, I\u2019d suggest that they call instead and they usually seemed surprised, like it was a completely novel idea.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My wife points out to me that half the phone calls we get these days are spam or outright scams. That wasn\u2019t the case when I was young, so it\u2019s likely that some of the changes are an adaptation to that. There are eight billion strangers in the world who can interrupt us at any moment to try to separate us from our money, and at almost no cost to themselves. This is a dramatic change from the days when long-distance sales calls were prohibitively expensive.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I always expected that over time we would develop rules of etiquette around the new technologies that have emerged. I\u2019m beginning to think that they already exist, but they bear little resemblance to the old ruleset. In many ways the very idea of having rules has gone away. The younger generations, which have grown up immersed in social media and cell phone culture, may innately understand something that I\u2019m only just starting to grasp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe the new rules are built on an understanding that it\u2019s not on us to police our own behavior when it comes to contacting each other. There\u2019s so much noise coming from our phones that our main duty is to ourselves: we decide who we\u2019re going to ignore, when we\u2019re going to ignore them, and for how long. As long as we\u2019re comfortable setting boundaries, we shouldn\u2019t worry ourselves with what others are trying to do. If that\u2019s the case, it seems a lot less kind than the old system, in which we tried to be courteous about when we reached out, and in turn we trusted each other\u2019s judgment enough to be receptive when they did. But if that\u2019s how it is, there\u2019s no point in complaining. As a business owner, I just need to be clear about how and when people can reach me, and happy when they do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At 42 I feel old and out of touch. Communicating with my customers is half of my job, and I\u2019m constantly thinking I no longer understand the basic rules of electronic communication. My interactions leave me wondering if the entire ruleset has been rewritten, or if people simply don\u2019t have manners anymore. I\u2019m beginning to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidthelocksmith.com\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/05\/18\/making-contact\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Making Contact&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.14 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Making Contact - David the Locksmith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"At 42 I feel old and out of touch. Communicating with my customers is half of my job, and I\u2019m constantly thinking I no longer understand the basic rules\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.davidthelocksmith.com\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/05\/18\/making-contact\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Making Contact - David the Locksmith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At 42 I feel old and out of touch. Communicating with my customers is half of my job, and I\u2019m constantly thinking I no longer understand the basic rules\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.davidthelocksmith.com\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/05\/18\/making-contact\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"David the Locksmith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-05-18T14:49:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-05-27T14:05:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.davidthelocksmith.com\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/05\/18\/making-contact\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.davidthelocksmith.com\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/05\/18\/making-contact\/\",\"name\":\"Making Contact - David the Locksmith\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.davidthelocksmith.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2025-05-18T14:49:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-05-27T14:05:48+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.davidthelocksmith.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/a88d10998d568effbcf72aae9d845826\"},\"description\":\"At 42 I feel old and out of touch. 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