Episode 64 • On the Phone
Break up
Get good reception
Get cut off
Hang up on someone
Dial a number
Story
Meg: Hey grandma! It’s me! Meg.
Grandma: Meg. Hi sweetie! How are you? [breaking up]
Meg: Grandma, I can’t hear you very well, what’s wrong with your phone?
Grandma: Oh, I don’t know, I got this new phone and I’m not sure how it –
Meg: Grandma, you’re breaking up, I think you’re not getting good reception… Could you try going to another room?
Grandma: Okay, let me just go to the kitchen. Is this better?
Meg: It’s a bit better, I think.
Grandma: So, tell me, honey, how’s the –
Meg: Grandma? Grandma? Ugh…
[dialing sound]
Meg: Grandma!
Grandma: Oh, Meg. It’s you. We got cut off.
Meg: No, grandma. You hung up on me. So anyway… I was just calling to- [dialing sound]. Grandma, what are you doing?
Kev: Hello? Grandma? Is everything okay?
Meg: Hey, Kev. It’s me, Meg. I think grandma dialed your number by mistake.
Grandma: Oh, look at that! My two favorite grandchildren on the phone with me at the same time! I didn’t know we could do that!
Questions
Oh my goodness, what a stressful conversation. I really do feel for poor Meg.
Break up
'Grandma, you’re breaking up.'
• If the person you’re talking to on the phone is breaking up, can you hear them well or not?
No. If the person you're talking to is breaking up, then you cannot hear them very well.
• Why can you not hear them well? Because they sound distant or because you can only hear part of what they’re saying?
That's because you can only hear part of what they're saying. When someone is breaking up, [unintelligible]. Okay, I don't know how that turned out. I'm going to listen to it later and probably be very embarrassed. That's how it sounds when someone is breaking up.
• What could cause you to break up?
If you're in an area, or a place, or a house, that doesn't get good reception, we're going to talk about this expression in the second set of questions. If you don't get good reception, if you don't get a strong signal, then maybe you could start breaking up during a phone conversation.
• If you call someone and they’re breaking up, what do you do?
Oh, my gosh, that is so frustrating. If that happens, and the person that I'm talking to starts breaking up, then I think i would give them maybe a few seconds, one minute tops, and then after that time, I either call them back or I'd tell them that we're going to talk another time, because it's so frustrating.
Get good reception
'I think you’re not getting good reception.'
• If you get good reception, how will the quality of your calls be?
If you get good reception and the other person, the one that you're talking to also gets good reception, then the quality of your call is going to be really, really good. You're going to hear each other perfectly.
• Have you ever stayed at a place where you didn’t get good reception, what did you do? Did you find a solution?
Oh, not really, I've been pretty lucky. I think in all the houses that I stayed at, I always managed to get good reception. Maybe there was like one room where I didn't get a very good reception, but then you could always move to a different room and get a good reception. So, yes.
Get cut off
'We got cut off.'
• If you are talking on the phone and you get cut off, can you still speak to the other person?
No, because the line disconnects. You can't keep talking to the other person.
• If you get cut off, does the line disconnect suddenly or gradually?
It's a sudden thing. I'm talking to someone and then all of a sudden [silence] there you go. See? Did you see what I did there? That's why you say cut off because it feels like you're being cut. You can't keep talking.
• If you get cut off, what do you usually do. Wait for the other person to call you back or do you call them back yourself?
Wait for the other person to call you back or do you call them back yourself? This is a big dilemma. I think the whole world should agree on a solution to this problem. If you're talking to someone, and then for whatever reason you get cut off, then you're always like, "Okay, should I call them back? Should they call me back?" I think we should all find a solution to this problem. Normally, because I'm a very impatient person. I would call them back right away. Then if I realize that they're also trying to call me, I would just like, not do anything for a couple of minutes and give them time to call me back. There's always like that moment of like, "Should I wait for them to call me or should I call them?"
Hang up on someone
'No, grandma. You hung up on me.'
• If you hang up on someone, do you end the conversation or do you keep talking?
If you hang up on someone, you end the conversation.
• Do you end it by saying goodbye or without any notice?
Usually, you can't say goodbye. Hanging up on someone that means that the other person still wants to talk, but you end the conversation. You hang up the phone, and you don't let them say whatever it is that they want it to say.
• Why would you hang up on someone?
Sometimes it's a mistake. You're talking, the other person's talking. All of a sudden, you press the wrong button, and you hang up. You hang up on them, but you didn't want to. Other times you do it on purpose because you're angry. Sometimes you don't want to talk to the other person, but the other person wants to talk to you and you get really frustrated, you want to end the conversation and so you hang up on them, which is really rude.
• Have you ever hung up on someone?
Not on purpose a lot. Just the other day, I was trying to have a, I think it wasn't like a 30-minute conversation with my boyfriend on the phone. I hung up on him a good five times, just because I can't use my phone. On purpose, I've done it, but I stopped doing it because I realized that it was very rude. In the past, I did hang up on someone, unfortunately.
Dial a number
'I think grandma dialed your number by mistake.'
• If you dial a number, do you plan to start a phone call or end a phone call?
If you dial a number, you plan to start a phone call. You want to call someone.
• What sound do many phones make when you dial a number?
Many phones are going to make this sound [dial tone]
• Do you still dial numbers nowadays when you have to call someone?
I think it's very unusual nowadays. What do you guys think? I honestly don't do it. I think I know only two phone numbers by heart. All the other ones I just have them saved on my phone and I absolutely like-- That's why I never dial them because I wouldn't know what to dial. There's actually like my house phone number, the one in Italy, that I still-- It's easier for me because it's a very short phone number. It's easier for me to dial the number and press like each individual key rather than look it up on my phone. So yes, That's really the only time I dial a phone number.
[mepr-active rule=”1521″ ifallowed=”hide”]
Join the Community and access the FULL transcript (Questions + Answers).
[/mepr-active]
[mepr-active rule=”1520″ ifallowed=”hide”]
[mepr-login-form]
[/mepr-active]
