The number is entered. The screen is lit. Your thumb is a quarter of an inch above the green circle and it has been there for eleven seconds.
Then the screen dims, because phones do that, and you press the side button to wake it, and the number is still there, and your thumb is still not moving.
You have done this on Tuesday and on Wednesday. It is now Thursday afternoon, and the office closes at five.
The call itself will take four minutes. You know this. It has already taken three days.
The Thumb That Will Not Move
It is worth noticing how physical this is. Not a decision, not a debate. A hand that will not complete a movement.
The reasoning parts of you are entirely on board. They have listed the benefits. They have pointed out, several times, that it is only a phone call.
They are shouting instructions at something that is not listening, because the thing holding your thumb still is older than reasoning and does not take notes.
Three Days of Almost
The cost of a deferred call is never the four minutes. It is the three days.
Three days of remembering it at odd moments. Three days of it sitting behind everything else, taking a small tax off every other thing you do.
Then the deadline moves, or the office closes, and now there is a second thing to dread: the call, and the fact that you left it so long.
That second layer is the real trap. Left long enough, the shame of not having called becomes larger than whatever the call was about.
People do not usually abandon these calls in one decision. They abandon them by being busy on Monday, and unwell on Tuesday, and it being late on Wednesday.
Why a Call Is Worse Than a Message
You can write a message eleven times. You can put it down and come back. You can delete a word.
A call is live. There is no draft. Whatever comes out of your mouth is the version that exists, and someone hears it while you are still deciding whether you meant it.
It is also unpredictable in a way text is not. You cannot know who will answer, what mood they are in, or what they will ask that you have not prepared for.
And a call gives you a listener’s silence. You have to fill it in real time, with your voice, while they wait.
Taking That Seriously Instead of Arguing With It
Most advice about this begins by telling you the fear is irrational. That is both true and completely useless.
You have already told yourself that, at length, over three days, and your thumb is still hovering.
So stop trying to win the argument. Treat the difficulty as a real condition of the task, the way you would treat cold water or a heavy box.
You do not talk yourself out of the cold. You decide how you are getting in.
Which means the working here is not persuasion. It is a set of practical arrangements that make the movement possible while the feeling is still present.
The feeling does not have to go first. It almost never does. It usually leaves about ninety seconds into the call, once there is something actual to attend to.
The Two Things You Write Down First
Sit down with an index card before you go anywhere near the phone. Two things go on it, and only two.
The first is your opening sentence, written out in full, exactly as you will say it.
The second is the one fact that must get across, no matter what else happens in the call.
Everything else can be improvised. Those two cannot, because those two are the parts that fail when your voice is unsteady at the start.
The First Sentence
Write it plainly. Who you are, and what you are calling about, in one breath.
Hello, my name is Ruth Ellery, I’m calling about an invoice from June that hasn’t been paid.
Notice what is not in it. No apology. No “sorry to bother you.” No long preamble explaining that you did try to email.
The apology is the most common error, and it costs you something immediately. It tells the person on the other end that you are not sure you are entitled to be calling.
Read the sentence out loud twice before you dial. Not in your head. Out loud, so your mouth has already made the shape once.
Voice work of this kind is a craft in itself, and the ground is covered in How to Speak a Spell Aloud: Voice, Breath and Delivery.
The One Fact That Must Get Across
Write it as a short line under the first sentence. Underline it.
The invoice is number 4471. It is fifty-one days overdue.
People come off difficult calls having been polite, having been listened to, and having somehow never said the thing. It happens constantly and it is why the call has to be made twice.
The underlined line is your check. Before you hang up, look at the card. If you have not said it, say it now, even awkwardly. Awkward and said beats smooth and unsaid.
Choosing the Hour
Pick a time inside opening hours with at least forty minutes to spare before they close.
Not four minutes before closing, which is a way of calling while hoping nobody answers. You know when you are doing that.
Mid-morning is usually best. Not the first ten minutes of the day, when the queue from overnight is being cleared. Not immediately after lunch.
Choose the hour the day before and write it down beside the appointment you would keep for anyone else.
The Working: Three Minutes and a Written Line
This is short by design. A long rite before a phone call becomes another way of not making it.
What you need:
- The index card with your two lines
- A pen and a second sheet of paper for notes during the call
- A glass of water
- A small object for your free hand: a stone, a coin, a bit of cord
- A chair, and a door you can close
No flame for this one. You need both the room and your attention, and a candle you have to watch is one thing too many.
The Steps
- Close the door. Sit down properly, both feet on the floor, rather than pacing. Pacing sounds like pacing down a phone line.
- Drink half the water. Put the glass where you can reach it, because a dry mouth is the most common practical problem in a difficult call.
- Take three slow breaths. Count them. Out longer than in.
- Read the first sentence aloud twice, at the volume you intend to use. Then read the underlined fact once.
- Hold the small object in your free hand and say one line to the room: Four minutes. Then it is done and I have the rest of the day.
- Set the object down where you can see it, put the card on your knee, and dial without pausing to reconsider.
- Let it ring. Do not hang up on the third ring. That is the last exit and you have decided not to take it.
Three minutes, start to finish. If it is taking longer, you have turned the preparation into the avoidance.
What the Rite Does Not Do
It does not make the call go well. It does not make the other person reasonable, and it does not guarantee the outcome you want.
What it reliably does is get the thumb to move. It puts you in a chair, at an hour you chose, with the first sentence already out of your mouth once.
That is a narrow thing. It is also the exact thing that has not been happening for three days.
If it is nerves in front of a listening audience that undo you more generally, there is a longer working in Public Speaking Spell for Steady Nerves and a Clear Voice.
The Hold Music
You will very likely be put on hold, and there is a particular danger in it.
The hold is when the adrenaline peaks and then has nowhere to go. Four minutes of the same eight bars, and by the end of it you have talked yourself back down into not wanting to do this.
So treat the hold as part of the working rather than an interruption to it. This is the middle of the rite, not a delay before it.
While it plays: read your card again. Put the pen at the top of the note sheet. Drink the rest of the water. Straighten up.
Do not open your laptop, do not check your phone with the other hand, do not go and put the kettle on. Wandering off is how people are still holding the phone when the person picks up and have to start from nothing.
The First Thirty Seconds
When someone answers, say your first sentence as written. All of it, without editing it live.
It will come out faster than you rehearsed. That is normal and nobody on the other end is grading it.
Then write their name at the top of your note sheet. Ask for it if they did not give it. This takes two seconds and changes the whole rest of the call.
If your voice shakes, keep going. It steadies once you are describing something specific — a date, a number, an address — because detail gives the voice work to do.
Getting Someone Unhelpful
Sometimes you get someone who cannot help, or will not, or who has clearly had a long day of their own.
Do not fight it. The person on the phone is rarely the person who made the rule, and winning an argument with them achieves nothing you actually want.
Have a sentence ready for this, said calmly and without heat.
I understand that’s the position. Can you tell me who I need to speak to, or what I need to send, to get this looked at again?
That sentence does two things. It accepts the answer, which ends the standoff, and it asks for the route, which is the only useful thing left in the call.
If it is a pattern rather than one bad afternoon — if you are repeatedly the person spoken over — the working in A Spell to Be Heard: When Your Words Keep Being Passed Over is aimed at exactly that footing.
Writing Down What Was Said
The moment you hang up, before anything else, write five things on the note sheet.
- The date and the time
- The name of the person you spoke to
- What they said would happen
- By when
- What you have to do next, if anything
Do it immediately. Within an hour you will remember the feeling of the call vividly and the content of it not at all.
Keep the sheet. If there is a second call, you will begin it from a position of fact rather than impression, and that changes how you are answered.
The Calls That Take Three Attempts
Some calls do not resolve. The line is engaged, the department is closed, the person who deals with it is back on Monday.
This is ordinary. It is not the universe declining your effort, and it is not a sign that you were foolish to try.
The important thing is that the second attempt is much cheaper than the first. The sentence is already written. Your mouth has made the shape. The card is on the desk.
Book the next attempt before the disappointment settles. Same card, new hour, written down.
What Remains When You Put the Phone Down
Almost always, the same thing: a slightly stunned feeling that it was smaller than the three days.
Do not skip past that. Sit for a moment and let it be true, because it is the only evidence that ever works on the part of you that would not move its thumb.
Then pick up the object you set down, put it back in the drawer or the pocket, and go and do something else entirely.
The card goes in the drawer too. There will be another call, and it is useful to find the old one there, in your own handwriting, from a day you got through.