Illustration by Gabrielle Drolet
Gabrielle Drolet is the author of the new book Look Ma, No Hands: A Chronic Pain Memoir.
A few months ago, I was e-mailing back and forth with an editor. I’m a full-time freelancer writer, meaning that e-mailing has become a core part of my job (as it has for most desk jobs). Generally, my workflow goes like this: I e-mail an editor to pitch a project; the editor e-mails me back to accept it; we e-mail each other for a long while. I send over a draft. The editor e-mails back edits. Eventually, the project gets wrapped up, and I e-mail them to pitch a new one. It’s a rhythm I’ve grown used to over the years.
But this time, halfway through the process I’d become accustomed to – at the junction where I usually receive a lengthy e-mail about potential changes – I got an e-mail I didn’t expect. My editor said she had notes for me, and asked if we could talk about them. Over the phone.
I’ve been freelancing for around seven years now, and there are a handful of editors I’ve maintained working relationships with that entire time. In many cases, I’ve never even heard their voices: These are people who exist to me only as Gmail profile pictures and e-mail addresses, our relationships never needing to progress past written correspondence. So the suggestion that we speak on the phone surprised me.
I worried I might be in trouble, or that the piece was somehow unpublishable. Instead, she just briefly walked me through her thoughts and ideas in the same way that she might have over e-mail, but with space for real conversation. And what might have turned into a 20-e-mail thread was instead condensed into a five-minute phone call.
There‘s a phrase which, in recent years, has become an integral part of modern-day work culture: This could have been an e-mail. It’s meant to elicit annoyance at meetings or phone calls that feel unnecessary. We want to deliver and receive information as efficiently and quickly as possible, cutting out any interactions that don’t feel optimized; why hold a meeting when you could send an e-mail summarizing its talking points instead?
There are surely a lot of settings and instances where this idea makes sense. It’s true that not everything needs to be a meeting or a phone call. However, there are moments when it feels like we‘ve swung too far in the opposite direction – because not everything should be an e-mail, either.
When we only talk over e-mail, we often lose some of the meaning and nuance that can be communicated in a real conversation. Meaning can easily be misinterpreted; something might unintentionally come across as passive-aggressive, or a directive might be misunderstood. It then takes dozens of back-and-forth e-mails to reach the same conclusion that could’ve been achieved in a short conversation.
Most crucially (to me, at least) is the fact that, in striving for efficiency, we can also lose the joy and connection that comes from working with others. Beyond being productive, that short call with my editor was nice because it humanized her in a way that e-mail never could. The conversation started with the minute-or-so of small talk that feels essential to any phone call: How are you doing? How’s the weather out there? I’m so glad to hear that! And in that brief exchange, I learned more about her than I ever would have if we hadn’t hopped on the phone. Because when you only communicate over e-mail, it’s easy to forget that you’re talking to and working with real people. We might bookend our writing with platitudes of “hope this e-mail finds you well” and “sending all my best,” but typing and reading those sentences so many times has made them lose their meaning.
Since the pandemic, a growing number of people work entirely remotely. I feel lucky to be part of that statistic; I love the freedom of freelancing and of carrying out my workdays in my own space. That being said, there‘s also something strange about having worked with people for years without ever speaking to them.
Phone calls aren’t just on the decline in work settings, though that’s where they feel most pronounced. It’s part of a wider cultural trend. Phone calls are on the decline, especially among Gen Z and Millennials, who prefer texting and e-mailing – and sometimes even actively dislike talking on the phone.
While efficiency is a factor here, there‘s also the fact that people have more control in text-based communication; you’re able to edit and carefully shape your thoughts in a way that’s not possible in a spontaneous conversation. It can feel less socially daunting, especially for those who’ve grown up primarily talking to friends over text rather than on the phone.
For a long time, I felt the same way. Having spent middle school and high school chatting with friends on social media or texting rather than picking up the phone, calling felt overly formal – and, at times, even stressful. I avoided it wherever possible in my social life, making plans or catching up with friends exclusively via text. So when I entered the work force, it felt natural that phone calls wouldn’t be a big part of my life there, either.
But in recent years, I’ve softened to them, even in social contexts. At 27, I’ve entered the part of my life where many of my friends and family members live in different parts of the country; people I used to see all the time by virtue of living together or going to the same school are now scattered across different cities and provinces. And while we could text each other about the goings-on in our lives for hours, that would still feel a little empty or removed compared to the same conversation on the phone: one where we can properly emote, react and talk without editing down what we have to say.
I understand that there are countless reasons why someone might not want to or be able to talk on the phone, and it definitely isn’t always necessary. But when I look back on my career, many of my favourite projects I’ve worked on – or, at least, the most memorable – seem to be the ones where I actually talked to the people I was working with. And while all of those phone calls probably could have been an e-mail, I’m glad they weren’t.