How to Be a Lunatic By 8.
Half an hour ago the editorial telephone called with a voice on account to be denied. We picked up the receiver, and the ensuing conversation went something like, tais:
"Is that Central one-noughts three?"
"No, this is Central one-noughtix."
"Well for the love of Mike then get off the damn line, I don't want you"
Why docs a man, ordinarily" nice, courte become a raging and pugnacious Yunatic at the end of a telephone wire? - A little quiet thought leads to the conclusion that the answer is largely psychological, A man who would never dream' of being rude to a perfect stranger in his home, the street, or his office has no compunction about being definitely insulting to a mere voice through the telephone. We do not In ordinary conversation, facial expression, inflexions of the voice, individual ' personality and the circumstances of meeting all play their part. Over the telephone these things are lost. Moreover, the telephone plays irritating little tricks which make us all hot and bothered, and consequently irritable, When X'chats with ¥ in the street, does not suddenly disappear into the void to be replaced at an interval by a total stranger. Neither does he break off in the middle of the conversation to buzz loudly in X's car, These things happen on the telephone, and they generate rudeness. For the most, part this [type of rudeness is utterly illogical and serves no useful purpose, the person addressed being in no' way to blame. In Shanghai and the Far East generally, telephonic irritation 4s added to by the unfortunate habit many people have of conducting their telephone conversations by proxy. X tells his office boy to call up Y. The boy obeys, and greeted with vile pidgin and told to wait. X being busy possibly forgets all about, the call for some minutes, with the result that gets tired of waiting and rings off in a state of high dudgeon. When X docs pick up the receiver it ts to talk to space, Result, X is annoyed, so is Y, and nothing is secomplished, "Inferiority complex" also enters into this business, 'The naturally weak man, bullied' by his wife, treated with good-natured tolerance by his friends, and extracting bare and maybe insolent obedience from his Chinese staff, finds himself in an unusually strong position at one end of a telephone wire. The per: sonality of the other person plays no part in their conversation, Subconsciously, then, he says to himself: "Ah, here is where I assert myself. Here is where I tell the other fellow exactly where he gets off." Which he does, in rich and ripe abuse.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.