SAVING LABOUR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 147, 24 June 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

SAVING LABOUR.

LURE OF THE TELEPHONE. ETIQUETTE OF INVITATIONS, The following is an extract from an article by Mr. Ivor Brown in the "Manchester Guardian." It may bo added that the person who uses the telephone as an introductory to correspondence is not unknown in newspaper offices. An unknown gentleman rang me tip tlic other evening and, finding me to be out, left copious and unintelligible messages; tlie next morning he rang me up again, and I emerged, somewhat peev ishly, from my batli to listen to an immense flow of words. He then read me out the text ot a letter which he proposed to send for my consideration. After five minutes of this I politely suggested that he should send me the letter, with which plan he finally agreed. So I got the letter. Now, if there had been no such laboursaving instrument as the telephone, and if ho had simply written me in the first place, I should have received his communication far earlier than I actually did. (The urgency of the matter was repeatedly stressed in his talk.) But he was engaged on propaganda; he was a live wire, a hustler, a man who gets things done; so he spent some odd pence of the Cause's money and a considerable quantity of his and my time on two quite senseless telephone calls preparatory to dispatching the letter. He is not alone in that species of folly. The world is full of people who, because there is a telephone, think they must use it. lam not so silly as to deny the advantages of possessing this' machine, but why cannot people remember that labour-saving devices exist to save labour and not to create further fuss and waste of time?

Also I wish that thcv would not give invitations by telephone; it is, no doubt, a convenient method for the host and exacts a quick reply. But the process not only gives no time to think of excuses, but also leads to stupid confusions because the speaker mumbles times, dates and places confusedly at you instead of putting them clearly on a piece of paper. Once more, the labour-saving device is simply a cause of bother; before being worried by my propagandist friend on the telephone I had been wandering about trying to find an address which had been given mo by the same method. I was brought up on the excellent Victorian principle that it is impolite f « give verbal invitations except to close friends. There was a sound reason for this principle; it afforded the opportunity of a plausible and courteous escape. But now it is customary practice to fire invitations and requests of all kinds over the telephone at people who, interrupted in their normal occupation, cannot immediately think of a good and gracious excuse; they have either to surrender (and curse themselves heartily for their weakness) or to blurt out something which is easily taken for rudeness. The Victorian etiquette was based on prudence, aud we suffer seriously for the loss of it. >