Have you received a text message with no name and you don’t know whose phone number it is? It’s not spam because the message includes information that a friend or client would know about you. How many times have you had to reply with “Who are you?”
Last week, someone sent me a Happy Birthday wish with emojis* but no name, and I didn’t recognize the phone number. I’m grateful for the remembrance, but I would enjoy it more if the person had added his or her name.
Two days a week I work in my husband’s office. I take calls and schedule appointments for all three of his locations. Some of his patients like to text. Most of them are from the 925 or 510 areas and I can make a reasonable guess who they are. When the phone number is from 415 or 707 or out of the Bay Area, I’m not as familiar with the numbers. I end up having to call them anyway to find out who they are.
I presume people think the thread of their calls to a number means the receiver of the call has that same thread, but usually we don’t. It’s deleted or it’s a first time text. I discovered that when I texted my baker who comes to our farmers market on Sundays. We can text him an order and he will save it for us until we get downtown. The second week, I listed our requests in a text and when we picked up our bag of bread and French pastries, he said he was trying to figure out who we were by what we ordered. Now I know my name needs to be on my texts.
Have you had any similar experiences? I’d like to hear about them. You can use the comments area.
*Emojis are “Digital Technology, a small digital picture or pictorial symbol that represents a thing, feeling, concept, etc., used in text messages and other electronic communications and usually part of a standardized set: She texted me an emoji of ‘money with wings,’ which may mean she’s out shopping.”
Above definition and example from http://www.dictionary.reference.com/browse/emoji?s=t
Julaina Kleist-Corwin
Editor of Written Across the Genres
