Pieces of Me

This column was published November 1, 2025 in the Manhattan Mercury.

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If you live long enough, you bear witness to small, subtle changes in how to deal with someone who wants your time and attention.

The career began with “while you were out” slips of pink paper, progressed to telephone answering machines featuring little audio cassette tapes, digital voicemail, email and text messaging, direct messaging via social media, video calls, and a myriad of apps, all aiming at the same target. For you to get a piece of me, or vice versa.

On a parallel track, the etiquette, the unspoken undercurrent of activity that accompanies my quest to get a piece of you, has also evolved. In many ways, the etiquette’s more important than the data or info I seek from you since it will drive your perception of me. It’s the long game.  

The expectation that you should drop everything, take my call and deal with me right now, seems thoughtless at best. I run the risk of you thinking I’m an arrogant, self-centered so and so.

With the proliferation of devices and their inherent technology, comes the blowing up of norms connected to communication. Before the digital revolution, I had a rule. Return every call before close of business the day it was received. Even if all I got was your voicemail, you knew I had returned your call promptly, which bolstered what you thought of me.

One thing I do now that would have seemed silly before is schedule phone calls. Early in my career, I would just pick up the phone and call. Clearly I had the time, and I made an assumption that you would make the time.

Today, I schedule all calls/Zooms via text: “When’s a good time for a quick phone call?” I generally add a hint of my motivation. “Would like to bounce an idea off you” or “need your advice” or “trying to get smarter about silt dredging.” It’s one more data point for those of whom I want a piece, to help them determine whether talking to me makes it onto their priorities list.

It’s about respect. Time is money, or at the very least, valuable enough for you to determine how to respond to me. And it’s about quality. You hit me cold with a phone call (assuming I answer it), more value will be added to whatever I can offer if I have some time to think about it, so let’s get a call on the calendar.

Another milestone on the communications chronology. I haven’t left an audio voicemail in more than a decade. Your smart phone will tell you when I called, and I’ll follow up with a quick text. Me leaving a recording with my name and reason for calling seems redundant to the point of being repetitive. Doing the same work twice, even.

I am also purposeful about being grammatically correct in emails and texts. Words have meaning, as do commas, ellipses and periods. And before you launch into, “OK Boomer,” let the word go forward here and now that I will also on occasion strategically and surgically deploy emojis. My go-to is the raised eyebrow, which communicates skepticism and/or curiosity. Pretty much sums me up.

Maybe because I’m semi-retired, I’m a bit more rigid. The nose to the grindstone level, intensity and frequency has ratcheted down a few notches, which leads me to the final and perhaps most important pearl gleaned from this evolution. If I don’t build the guardrails, others will.

Mike Matson’s column appears every other weekend in The Mercury, and he hosts ‘Within Reason,’ weekdays at 9 a.m. on NewsRadio KMAN.