Well well.. my comments seem to be dead. I can't figure out how to revive them either, but I'll keep trying. That's the whole purpose of all this website crap anyhow, I gotta learn!

Without any further BS, I give you "Why Call Waiting Should Die"

I have had the call waiting "service" twice in my life. Once was in college, when I lived with five other girls in a house. This was before mobile phones and voicemail, so if we hadn't have ordered call waiting, we'd have been at each other's throats all the time. Ten years later I had it set up on my home phone when my mother was ill, because I found myself on the phone more than most people, and she'd always need something the minute I picked up the phone . This way, I could always be reached.

The convenience of having the line more or less free at all times was outweighed by the annoyance of that earslpitting beep. I hated being interrupted. When I lived with the girls, the phone only ever rang when someone was already talking on it. Half the time, we all just ignored the beep or turned it off anyway. When my mother was sick, 9 out of 10 times that damned thing went off it wasn't my mother, but yet I had to switch over to answer the line, just to let the person calling me know that I couldn't talk to them.

And what happens when you do that? 1. The person you are already talking to is put on hold, letting them know that they are not as interesting as the possibility of what could be going on on the other line. 2. You also reject the person calling on the second line, because you are already on the phone and can't talk to them. What good comes of this?

Here are more reasons why call waiting is rude:

1. If you are the caller and your callee puts you on hold, you get the pleasure of paying for being put on hold.
2. Sometimes the person with the call waiting takes a really long time on that second call.
3. It is nothing but a symptom of our short attention span world that we can't concentrate on one phone call at a time
4. The sound of the beep makes me hit the ceiling because it is so high pitched, and the tone also blocks out the last thing the person talking is saying. So not only is your conversation interrupted, but the speaker has to repeat him/herself.
5. If it is important, the person calling on line two can call back later when the line isn't busy. If it is a matter of life or death, it costs a mere $2.75 (I just called Ameritech to verify this) to have an operator break into that person's line to tell them that they have an emergency call waiting.
6. "I'm bored and I was just wondering what you were up to" is not a matter of life or death.

When I had my call waiting disconnected after my mother's well-being was no longer an issue, I had the call waiting disconnected. Ameritech was shocked that I wanted to do this, and were ready to send a technician to my house right away to set up a second line... after all, why else would anyone give up this gift from the gods?! They even offered me two months FREE service with caller ID thrown in for the low, low price of $10 plus installation and equipment. Can you believe I turned that down?

But their reaction was nothing like the accusatory reaction I got from friends. "I tried calling you and your line was BUSY!!!" People forget about busy signals when they have call waiting, and they actually get insulted when they hear it. I have been bitched out for using my own telephone because someone wanted to call me. Now how self-centered is that? Why do people think their call is more important than the one I am currently on? And besides that, it is MY PHONE and I have it to use it when I want, not to sit around and wait for them to call. Actually, it has been two years since I had call waiting disabled for the last time, and people still bitch when they get a busy signal.

Well bitch all you want folks, because you're just going to have to wait until my line is free if you wanna talk with me.

Coming soon: Cell Phones - I'd rather die than listen to your cackling on the bus.