Talking on the phone

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I find talking on the phone difficult. If the results are promising I might do another poll asking about cell phones versus landlines-- what do you think? (For me, I often find myself listening to a cell phone conversation on speakerphone where I can't get away. This is really, really painful. Incredibly so.)

Not painful, but awkward. I am very terse on the phone. It's not a good thing when dealing with customers because I have to put a lot of energy into being civil. I just want to get to the point and dispense with all the irrelevancies. It's pretty hard to hide my impatience.

I love landline phones. Cell phones are not what I am used to. I can't hear very well on cell phones and I like having the mouth speaker closer to my mouth. On cell phones, I get the impression people can't hear what I am saying when they can. It's because the phone background sound is different on a cell phone. There isn't any. On a regular land line phone, there's this um...sound that isn't a sound. It's a sound that's more like a feeling to me and I can tell when someone is there. I can't tell on a cell phone, so there's too many hellos from my end.
One time, I was at the store getting some Little Debbie strawberry shortcake roll ups for my aunt. They had none, so I took my pay-as-you-go Trac phone and rang my aunt for instructions on what to do next. I couldn't hear anything she was saying on that phone!! !

I don't find it painful at all.

I don't like doing it in some situations, hate it at work especially when others are able to listen to me, I feel really exposed.

I can't even pretend to do small talk on the phone to other people so just cut them off when they are trying and get to the point which they probably don't appreciate!

I can talk to family for hours on the phone tho.

I prefer land line over cell phone as well. Ana reminded me of one thing I consider worse about phones than speaking face-to-face, and that is that if you can't hear what the other person is saying--whether because the connection is too quiet or because there's too much other noise around--you don't have the option of reading lips. I never know what to say when I can't hear what the other person is saying. Anything I think to say sounds rude.

Hate the phone ... hate it, hate it, hate it!

I might as well be delivering a monologue to a sold out Madison Square Garden when I have to talk on the phone. That's about as comfortable as I feel speaking. And listening? Forget it ... I need to see lips moving in order to get much meaning out of the spoken word.

I find it painful. Not in terms of anxiety (I really don't feel anxious about talking to people) but in terms of something else. For some reason, talking on the phone draws on energy that I really should not have to spare for it. It feels like trying to keep up in a conversation with three people face to face.

Other things can make it worse, like a lot of noise on either or both ends thus requiring yelling. And one thing that makes it worse is needing to repeat something because the person on the other end misunderstood, or asking them to repeat.

I collect vintage Western Electric telephones. Talking on the phone is awkward, but less stressing than in person. Because of my stuttering problem, I can't say "hello" because I can't get the word out, which can be very embarrassing.

I have difficulties with conversation both in person and through the phone. I much prefer texting, mainly because it gives me more time to formulate my thoughts.

Yes, another phone-hater, here.

Yeah, that's about the best I've been able to narrow it down. It's not anxiety, but I think having to keep kicking my brain to get it to keep up and generate meaningful & correct (as in saying what I actually mean) responses at a normal rate (which is exhausting). And filtering background noise and such also adds to the "fun."

Maybe some hacker here can write a virus what will disable all voice communication on phones, but leave email & texting intact, so that those can become the dominant forms of communication. It's selfish, but I would like that very much.

Depends on the context I guess. Every phone call I recieve is awkward: first the ringing makes my heart race, then i pick up not knowing if I should be friendly or formal when I don't know the number, then I'm unprepared.
The ones I make myself , if friendly, as in calling my sister, generally go ok if a bit "off-rythm" at times. But I have no anxiety about them.
I remember when I had to look for a house, last year, so as an adult, my mother was here for the summer and I kept trying to have her call for me. When she said she was tired of it and I should do it now, what happened was funny in retrospect: I was thinking go, dammit, you're an adult, the script is all there in your head, just go and speak. I would then pick the phone up, start dialling, go into shutdown and escape to smoke on the balcony. Rince and repeat. Then one phone call would occur, and I would need 15 minutes to recover. It's funny now but really it can be exhausting, calling 30 people in a row only to be politely rejected ...

I can talk on the phone but don't really enjoy it so I don't do it for fun like some (NT) people do. When it comes to live conversation (rather than posting), I really rely on visual body language for the little when-to-speak cues. On the phone I'll start talking before somebody is finished or there is a silence because I didn't realize it was my turn. I have all the problems people describe here with face- to- face conversation because the body language is missing.

It's even worse with cell phones. With land lines I can hear some auditory cues like falling voice as the other person's thought ends. That nuance gets lost many times in the crackly noise of some cell phone calls. Then I am either cutting in to the other person's sentence or missing my cue and having silence.

Aspie and generally no... but it depends on the person on the other end of the line.

I've always dislike using the phone. It's always awkward and I try and end the conversation as quickly as possible. I've always preferred the written word to speaking though.

I've actually had trouble being able to end a call (or conversation, for that matter) at times. (Though not as much as when I was younger, since I know the standard scripts for that a lot better, now.)

I always stumble over the end of the conversation and end up hanging up most of the time.