Literacy is certainly part of it... but several have suckered me into calls [that took an order of magnitude longer] simply by stating they didn't like to type. In the plainest terms: they'd rather waste our collective time to spare their individual effort.
I don't mean in terms of bandwidth. "Real words" can indeed clear things up. I truly mean they didn't want to write one question, read the response, and carry on. Mirroring this mundane exchange to a call makes for laziness I only tolerate because of a paycheck.
My pet theories/reasons include poor vision and passive-aggression. An extremely soft power play, forcing synchronous communication when it's truly unnecessary.
Realistically I know they just want to bond... but I'm here to be paid/keep us profitable. We'll manage with some emotional distance, I promise. Trying to force things often has the opposite effect. I'm more friendly to those who don't appear to have ulterior motives!
This is the classic "this meeting could have been an email" phenomenon. As much as I do actually find doing a quick sync to sometimes be helpful (e.g. if a code review spawns a discussion that requires multiple round-trips and isn't resolved, moving the discussion to somewhere more immediate and then updating the thread with the resolution that was picked "offline" can help unblock things faster in some situations), I wholeheartedly agree that this is extremely frustrating to me. Despite often being super energetic and talkative, I'm someone who fits the definition of "introvert" that some people use where interacting with other people (besides my wife) requires spending mental energy, and I need at least a few hours a day to "recharge" away from even family and friends to not get overwhelmed and exhausted, even if it's just retiring to my room a bit earlier when on a trip to visit family and just hanging out for a bit on my laptop it whatever. Because of this, I can't help but resent when someone else squanders some of my "social interaction quota" for the day even when they probably don't realize that's what they're doing.
I'm incredibly lucky that my wife feels the same way as me, and we're so in tune with each other that we can spend unlimited time together without ever feeling spent in the same way, but it's always a mix of amusing and frustrating to me when her family doesn't seem to understand this the same way that we do. I absolutely adore my wife's mother, and she's been nothing but good to me since I started dating my wife, but she loves to text my wife and say something like "can you call me when you get a chance?", only for the reason she wanted to talk to turn it to be asking something extremely straightforward like "is it okay if we don't have cornbread for Thanksgiving this year?" Fortunately, my wife is a saint compared to me in terms of patience, and we love her mother enough that indulging this sort of thing is far more worthwhile than if it were happening from a coworker even if I'm usually friendly with then.
Sadly there's another reason to switch to verbal communication over the potential accountability of recorded text: discussion of corruption and conspiracy, or gas lighting and misdirection. Seems like a lot of important communications at government and corporate institutions happen over dissapearing encrypted messages. Beware the dark triad!
I don't mean in terms of bandwidth. "Real words" can indeed clear things up. I truly mean they didn't want to write one question, read the response, and carry on. Mirroring this mundane exchange to a call makes for laziness I only tolerate because of a paycheck.
My pet theories/reasons include poor vision and passive-aggression. An extremely soft power play, forcing synchronous communication when it's truly unnecessary.
Realistically I know they just want to bond... but I'm here to be paid/keep us profitable. We'll manage with some emotional distance, I promise. Trying to force things often has the opposite effect. I'm more friendly to those who don't appear to have ulterior motives!