What?  Sorry, could you say that again?  Sorry, I still didn’t get that.

The realization that the beloved cellphone, whether crackberry, iPhone or the ancient relic strapped to the geeky belt holster, the plain vanilla phone that doesn’t do anything except make and receive calls, could leave a client believing I was on the way when in fact I had no clue what they were calling about became clear to me a long time ago.  The voice mail, with message obiterated by status, breaking up, left me clueless.  Just because you said the words doesn’t mean they could be heard.

When the phone call came in yesterday, the thing that made it different was that it was mano a mano.  I was there, on the phone, talking to a client I knew well.  He was in trouble, again.  He needed me, now.  And I had no idea what he was trying to tell me because the call kept breaking up.  He’s a great guy and a great client.  But no matter how great he is, I can’t help if I can’t hear him.

Let’s start from the beginning.  He speaks with an accent, which already requires a significant additional level of focus to make sure I know what he’s saying.  It’s a problem when we’re sitting in the same room, especially when he’s excited and speaks in rapid fire bursts.  He sometimes has difficulty with finding the right word, and I’m left to either question what he means or reinterpret what he’s saying so I get it right.   He’s not great with things like pronouns, and tends to use them rather than names, dates, the sort of details that are required to have a firm grasp of who did what to whom.

None of this is a problem, but just something to be aware of and get past to make sure I know what he’s talking about.  And then comes the cellphone.

As anyone who knows me is aware, I’m a Luddite when it comes to cellphones.  Leave a message on mine and it’s unlikely I will get it for a week.  I don’t turn my phone on unless I need to make a call, and I rarely need to make a call.  This isn’t to denigrate those people who live on their cellphones.  Plenty of my friends do.  It’s just not my thing.  Then again, I’m not all that big with landlines either.  Phones are for communication, not entertainment.  I say whatever it is I have to say, then get off the phone.

Like everyone else, I see the commercials on television for the latest cellphone gadgetry.  I know about 3G and 4G, though I didn’t know what it meant until my teenage son explained it to me.  I see the maps of cellphone coverage that blocks football games and the ones that fall into bowls of soup at diners, where calling someone in the middle of eating is apparently critical.  I get it.

Harsh reality, however, does heed television commercials.  Despite the glory of whatever number of “G”s are in fashion today, cellphones are still not perfect.  They break up, words get lost, there’s an echo, overtalking cuts off the other speaker.  They may be shiny and download a thousand songs in a millisecond (I wouldn’t know, but it could happen).  What they do not do is assure adequate communication in times of stress and crisis.

I feel foolish when I have to ask a caller three times what he’s saying, or tell him that I didn’t understand.  I’m frustrated. They’re frustrated.  Critical information can be lost or misunderstood.  In this business, every piece of information has the potential to be critical.  There’s nothing that I’m willing to lose in a conversation.   After three tries, people give up on trying to clear up the missing bits, the lack of comprehension.  They move on.  It could mean that a critical bit is lost.

Cellphones are perfectly adequate for calls that have no consequences.  If part of the conversation is lost, no big deal.  It can be picked up later, whether on a landline or in person.  There’s plenty of time to straighten it out if there’s a misunderstanding.  When it’s critical, however, the cellphone fails.

Sure, cellphones are ubiquitous and convenient.  We can call anytime, anywhere, anyone (except me, because my phone isn’t on).  But if you want to be certain, I mean truly certain, that the message has been communicated and received, clearly and completely, the cellphone will not do.

I finally learned from my client’s wife the details I needed to help.  It ended up being extremely urgent, but a relatively easy fix, and I took care of it with a few phone calls.  I used my landline to call someone else’s landline.  Our communication went as smooth as silk.  Problem solved.