The Rawness

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One goal I had with this blog was not to just talk at people like a know-it-all. What I really wanted to do was to create open and honest two-way communication with total strangers. I wanted to have a real exchange of ideas with people and learn as much from commenters as they hopefully learned from me.

That’s why I occasionally want to do a piece like this, where I ask the commenters to educate me on something. This is what I affectionately will call my “People Who Need To Die” series. I’ve been compiling this list of pet peeve personality types since, I dunno, 6 years old, and the list has spiraled out of control to where I lost count. Every now and then I’ll pull a random personality type out of a hat and ask for feedback and insights about it.

Today’s person who needs to die is #378: the conversational hostage-holder known as the phone squatter. I had an experience with one of these people today. This is the type of person who, once he or she has you on the phone, will do whatever it takes to keep you on as if their very life depends on it. Lulls do not deter them. Yawns, hints, overt statements…all are just challenges to be trampled over or sidestepped entirely.

Phone squatter comes in many varieties. For example there’s the gorilla squatter. This one strongarms you into staying. He pushes past all objections and just keeps talking. You try to signal that you are signing off and he’ll just cut you off and ignore you. Sometimes if you manage to actually vocalize that you want to get off, he will go ultra-direct and actually call you out on it, like so:

You: “All right, well it was nice talking to you.”

Gorilla Squatter: “You gettin’ off?”

You: “Yeah, I have a bunch of things to do…”

Gorilla Squatter: “Like what?”

You: “Uh…like, I have to…”

Gorilla Squatter: “Yeah right, nigga, you just want to get off the phone. You don’t have to lie to me. I know how that goes.”

You: “No that’s not it, I really have a lot of stuff to do.”

Gorilla: “Yeah, right. You just trying to get off. I see how you do, son.” [NOTE THE CONFRONTATIONAL APPROACH COMBINED WITH THE REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY]

This is where the gorilla squatter gets you, because he has strongarmed you into a corner, then tricked you into justifying and explaining yourself for doing what is your God-given right, which is to get off your own damn phone! Now you are not only on the defensive, but you’re practically apologizing and have a vague guilt over being called out.

You: “Hey, it’s not that I don’t want to talk to you, it’s…”

Gorilla: “No, you don’t. It’s cool, I can take a hint.”

You: “NO! I do want to talk to you!

Gorilla: “All right then, fine, let me finish telling you about what Rayray and them did….”

The gorilla squatter uses a mix of intimidation and reverse psychology to get you every time. The key is to never waver or get caught in the trap of justifying yourself for trying to get off, or like a shark sniffing blood in the water, he’ll pounce on you and rip you to shreds. He can smell weakness and doubt from the other end of that receiver. He’s a pro.

The other type of phone squatter is the Sneaky Squatter. This is the guy that doesn’t confront you or guilt you out like Gorilla. His tactic is to act like he’s agreeing with you. He puts up no overt resistance. He acts like he’s trying to get off the phone too. But somehow or other, he sneakily hooks you into another strand of conversation, while making it look perfectly innocent and natural. You’ve tried to sign off about 20 times and each time he agrees, yet next thing you know a knew conversation topic somehow started. His key weapons are evasion, deflection and rapid fire, naturalistic segues. After realizing you’ve been duped into continuing the conversation, you try to get off again a few minutes later only to get tricked again. After trying to get off several times and getting duped each time, you find yourself feeling guilty for constantly trying to get off even though you’ve done nothing wrong, or you get so fed up you blow up at this character, and then feel bad over that. Rather than describe it further, let’s just click the icon below and listen to an example (warning, salty ass language ahead):

The last type of phone squatter is the Storyteller Squatter. This type of squatter is an attention whore that loves to get people to listen to his problems, real or imagined. It’s never “Hi, how’s the fam, how’s the wife, how’s work, I’m fine, bye.” Instead it’s sort of like stream of consciousness PCP-induced venting; it’s really vague, the story is nonlinear and goes nowhere, and you never understand what it was about once it’s over. The substance of the story isn’t as important to this cat as the feeling that he’s being listened to and humored. He’s a narcissist to the nth degree. This dude doesn’t even care if you get a word in edgewise, and may even cut you off and talk over you, even when all you’re doing is agreeing with him. For example Storyteller starts off by telling you about some major problem, for example he’s mad at his coworkers and he thinks he’s going to lose his job. That’s the major hook, right? Once he unloads something heavy like that on you, you can’t just get off the phone without looking like a major insensitive dickhead, right? Now that he knows he’s got you captive, he’s free to go off and regale you with tangents about his baby mama, his money problems, his dating issues, why he can’t get his car fixed, how his parents pissed him off, the circus, all the while claiming that it relates to his original point (which he’s probably forgotten by this point anyway). This dude’s preferred method is layering and complexity. He just adds layers and layers to the story until you can’t even follow it anymore. By the time the circus midgets and the bulimic strippers enter the story you’re too heavily invested to bail out now, he’s no closer to explaining his original problem and he’s guaranteed that there’s no easy way to wrap the story up at this point. If you say, “Let’s just finish it tomorrow,” he’s just say “No prob, I’m almost done, let me just tell you the very last part.” Then he’ll introduce a whole new tangent and cast of characters. When (if) he finishes his story, DON’T remind him that he never actually returned to the original point of the story (in this example, it was the tension with the coworkers and his fear of getting fired) because he’ll just say “Oh yeah, you’re right!” and start all over again. (I fell into this trap before)

Does anyone know people like this? What motivates them? Is it loneliness? Idleness? Insanity? Did they receive too much attention growing up? Not enough? I’m the type of guy that hates long phone conversations because I imagine a million more productive things I could be doing instead. But the phone squatter seems like if left to his own devices, he would never sign off of a conversation on his own. Are they oblivious to the fact that people want to get off? Or do they realize it but are just so shameless that they don’t care?

The worst situation with these guys is when they actually have some piece of information you need. This happened to me recently. I started doing the balancing game: “Is what I need from them important enough to risk being held hostage on your phone? And if it is important enough, then you have to phone and having to do battle to get off?” I decided it was, so I dialed the dreaded number. 1 ring (hm)…..2 rings (looking good)….3 rings (come on, one more to go)….4 rings (I can see the promised land!)…VOICEMAIL!!!! YES!! Left him a message telling what I needed. Hallelujah!

He calls back later, I screen the call with Caller ID (first line of defense against the squatter), voicemail symbol comes on and I check the voicemail to get my information.:”Yo T…Got what you need….call me.” Motherfucker. This is not an accident or a harmless character quirk.

The squatter is a social sadist.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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