Is this a good time to speak, please?

Imagine this.

Imagine receiving a call where the caller asks you for permission to speak. Talk about separating the wheat from the chaff, the thoroughbreds from the mules, the customer-focused from the self-centered and the refined from the coarse!

We are supposedly on the way to becoming a super-power over the next couple of decades. We strut our stuff about we Indians occupying the best corporate positions worldwide. We have big dreams and bigger mouths. Oh, we can out-converse our opponents by an easy mile, and outrun them to the stars. Yet, we lack in basic communication courtesy. Especially phone manners. Maybe, not all of us, but surely most of us.

Haven't you been subjected to receiving calls where you are tortured with a direct pitch to sell you just one of the many thousand products and services out there? Nobody bothers to ask you if you are up to listening? They are not interested in understanding if you are in the middle of your morning ablutions or are trying to recover form a fierce, roaring exchange of tempers with your spouse. You could be trying to eat lunch or picking every call in the hope that it is a new customer trying to reach out to you. No, Sir, they don't care. All they intend is to vomit their spiel down your unwilling ears which have been conned by deceit. And you so distinctly remember listing yourself with the do-not-disturb registry a thousand times at least, just to ensure they get the message. Where did it go wrong?

These outrageous calls raise your heckles high enough to hit the ceiling, they raise ones' blood pressure, they tighten your neck muscles and raise the frequency of your voice to a shrieking shrillness. And why wouldn't they? Disconnecting them without responding would only mean that they will keep calling, until you have turned purple in the face and are in imminent danger of exploding. POP.

These vile calls are akin to someone trying to enter your haven, your home, your sanctum sanctorum, your inner space without knocking gently on the door or ringing the bell. It beats me why any company or worth its salt would embark on a self-destructive campaign to turn potential customers into bitter foes. You can depend on it. The names have been hammered into my poor brain so effectively, that they have earned the dislike, the loathing and disgust of a someone who lives their life by the tenets of simple basic courtesy. Forever. I will have no truck with these companies. I will pay another brand more, I will put up with their shortcomings, grin and bear their incompetency, but never do business with you. You shall not have the privilege of sliding your hands into my wallet. Nopes.

This is just not my story. A doctor friend revealed to me that tipping point down the valley to insanity was often a phone call. The pest of a sales call which came like a bolt out of the blue to ambush the poor, helpless and unprepared person. Just as they were trying to get their breathing back in order. All hell breaks lose. The grandmother in the other room hard of hearing, yells in her quivering voice, " Can you please tone down your voice? You're yelling."

Down? It is just as well that your hands cannot travel through the ether to reach the violator. This is sheer helplessness. And helpless unleashes blind rage, and along with it, a volley of words which would shame even the most versatile with swearwords. Hah! "Take that. Don't dare call me again". Innocent you never realized that the vermin caller has been trained by the vermin brand to handle and not help. They have been forewarned of the explosions, the volcanic ash, the billows of smoke, the works. Just as you dust your hands and start exiting the arena a victor, comes another call. No, its not the same insurance company, this time it is time-share resorts company. You are beaten, brow-beaten and beaten by the brow, whatever you wish to make out of it.

How many of us who are subjected to this on a daily, hourly basis in India, are guilty of the same? We call our colleagues, clients, potential clients, family, friends, neighbors and strangers, only to assault them with our amazing personalities and our near perfect agendas without giving them tie to breathe in or out? How many of us fail to answer the phone with greetings, a mere "Good morning'? By the way the immortalized "HELLO" is the last name of Alexander graham Bell's girlfriend Margaret. Margaret Hello. Just in case, you didn't know.

And, we are not done yet. How many of us ask " Is this a good time to speak, please?', after we identify ourselves and the reason for the phone call? Well, if you are one of the almost-extinct few who do, my sympathies are with you, you never deserved this cold-calling bit. If you don't ask permission to speak when you phone someone, you fully well deserve each of 'those' phone calls which come your way. Cold calling leaves you cold in the gut. You stand to lose the goodwill of those you are calling and be quarantined in the deepest recesses of that person's memory, which she/he will unravel a the apt time to convict you.

" Is this a good time to speak, please?"

Even the busiest people will stop in their tracks, amazed, delighted, euphoric, to make time for you. Maybe not all, but at least a few. And you will never make enemies. The discerning will recognize you. Value seeks value. A thoroughbred standing in the meadow with the a pack of mules, is treated like royalty. Small things set you apart.

Go get that crown.

NOW!