SANDCASTLES OF LIFE: Somewhere, we lost the busy signal

I sometimes miss when phones were attached to the wall.

Not because I particularly miss tangled phone cords, busy signals or being stuck in the kitchen while talking to someone.

Although, now that I think about it, those cords did provide some entertainment.

When I was a teenager, we had a phone in the kitchen with one of those very long receiver cords. If I wanted privacy, I would stretch that cord across the kitchen, squeeze into the laundry room and shut the door, completely convinced I had created some kind of soundproof communication bunker.

I had not.

My brothers and sister could hear every word.

Of course, at the time, I was certain the closed laundry room door had somehow defeated both basic acoustics and sibling curiosity.

Back then, the problem was finding privacy. Now the problem is finding a way to be unavailable.

That thought occurred to me late Saturday while I was at the office.

I had been there most of the day, not because Saturday is a normal workday, but precisely because it isn't.

There are things I need to get done that are almost impossible to accomplish during the week. The phone rings. Emails arrive. Someone needs an answer. Something unexpected comes up. One task gets interrupted by another and another until you reach the end of the day wondering what happened to the thing you sat down to do that morning.

Saturday is different.

Or at least it is supposed to be.

It's my chance to sit down, concentrate and tackle the things that require more than five uninterrupted minutes of thought.

So, when my cellphone rang, I didn't answer it. I was focused on what I was doing and didn't want to break my concentration.

A moment later, it rang again.

I kept working.

Then my office phone rang.

Three back-to-back calls - two to my cell and one to my office - all from someone I didn't know.

Then came the text.

It was the same person who had been calling,  reaching out about entertainment software. He wasn't local, I hadn't previously done business with him and there wasn't an emergency. He simply had something he wanted to pitch and apparently decided Saturday was as good a day as any to start the conversation.

I responded and told him to send me the information and I would look at it Monday during normal business hours.

I thought that was fairly clear.

Apparently, it was not.

The texts continued.

Yes, I happened to be sitting in my office.

But he didn't know that.

And, more importantly, it shouldn't have mattered.

That got me thinking about those old phones attached to the wall.

There was a time when someone could call your office and, if you weren't there, you simply weren't there.

That was the end of it.

Maybe they left a message.

Maybe they called back Monday.

Somehow, businesses survived.

There are people in the workforce today who have never known that world.

They've never left the house knowing that, until they came home, nobody could call them. They probably never called a friend's house and had to make awkward small talk with a parent or sibling before asking to speak to the person they actually wanted. They've never had to ask, “Is so-and-so there?” And they've certainly never stretched a phone cord as far as it would go in search of a little privacy.

More importantly, they've never known a world where being unreachable was perfectly normal.

There was no expectation that everyone should be available all the time because it simply wasn't possible.

Then we got cellphones.

And email.

And text messages.

And Facebook Messenger.

And all the other wonderful ways we now have to reach another human being anywhere, anytime.

Somewhere along the way, though, I think we confused the ability to reach someone with the right to have access to them.

Those aren't the same thing.

Technology has made communication incredibly convenient. I certainly wouldn't want to give up my cellphone and go back to waiting until I got home to find out who called.

But convenience should work both ways.

Just because I can receive your message at 7 p.m., on Sunday morning or while I'm sitting at dinner doesn't mean you are entitled to an immediate response.

And if I tell you I'll deal with something during business hours, continuing to push isn't good customer service.

It's actually a pretty effective way to make sure I don't want to do business with you at all.

Maybe what I really miss isn't the phone attached to the wall.

Maybe I miss what that phone represented.

When you left work, you left the phone there.

When the business was closed, it was closed.

When somebody wasn't available, we accepted that and tried again later.

We didn't assume that because we had a way to reach someone, they were obligated to be reachable.

I don't want to go backward. I like being able to work from almost anywhere. I like being able to send a quick text instead of playing phone tag. I like having the entire world available from a little device I carry in my purse.

I just think maybe we could bring one thing back from the days of the wall phone.

The understanding that sometimes nobody answers.

And that's OK.

They'll get back to you Monday.