What may seem like a great idea to some is nothing more than a nuisance to me.
What is it that has this well-mannered journalist all riled up?
Group texting.
Now before I get started, I am going to come clean and admit that I have been guilty of sending a group text too, but I try to do it on an extremely limited basis. About the only time I have sent a group text is when I needed to quickly inform my choir that due to inclement weather practice would be cancelled.
I didn’t want anyone on the nasty, slick roads, but other than that, I try to limit my group texts to two or three people. Anymore than that and it’s just plain annoying.
The worst is when someone decides to send a group text during work hours. Come on people. Even if one would just assume that most people work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., this would cut down on a lot of the day group texting annoyances that I must endure.
I can’t stand it when I am typing up a story, conducting an interview or at a meeting, and the phone starts to vibrate. There are times when I have had to politely text the group back to please exclude me from their group texts because I am at work.
The same goes for group emails. This didn’t use to be a problem, but our cell phones, which I call my hand-held computer, are used for just about everything but calling. This includes emails. I have four different email accounts on my phone, one for work, one for a board I sit on and two personal. If you don’t specifically change your settings to stop notifications on each email, the phone could be beeping all day long.
I know what some are thinking, “Just leave your cell phone at home.” This would certainly be a solution to the problem, but with kids in school I don’t want a nurse or teacher calling three different numbers to contact me if it’s an emergency.
Plus, I like to look through my phone during my lunch break to see if I did indeed miss anything important.
More often than not, just a few emails have come through.
If it is really that important, then you should probably be calling everyone instead of sending a text. Now, I know that would apparently be just too hard for someone to do since we have all this modern technology that basically cuts out any real form of human communication, but can we give it a try?
Have we really become a society where picking up the phone and calling someone is just too difficult and inconvenient?
I would certainly hope not, since this is still the main way I line up, and in most cases, conduct my interviews.
I’m not one to complain without having a few solutions in mind. One is simple -- don’t send a group text. The next is pretty simple too, if you are involved in a group text, don’t reply to the entire group, just reply to the one sending the group text or email.
This method will stop the other 13 plus people included in the text from having their phones beep nonstop.
Finally, keep your group texts small by limiting it to two to three people.
This should be pretty simple to do because most phones have a select all, copy and paste button to pick.
Hopefully, some of these solutions will be used for those sending me group texts. One can only hope, right?
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