Phone Phobia and DJ Done!

We met with the DJ from Chris Laich's company and Chris himself on Saturday. They both are really nice and what we love about them is their forwardness about price (as some other companies had some hidden costs) and the fact that they were so professional. You'd never guess these two guys were DJs. One of them looks like a dorky businessman and our DJ looks a little like a body guard or something.

I had only one compaint about them (which is better than how many complaints I had about other DJs we met with). They charge extra for extra speakers our location needs - $100 PER speaker. After discussing this we went onto talking about other stuff, but I interrupted and asked "I hope you don't mind, but why $100 per speaker?". I honestly don't think he had ever been asked this question. If he had, he should come up with a better answer. His answer was that it's more work for the DJ because it takes an extra 15 minutes per speaker to set up and take down. But meanwhile, earlier in the meeting he had said that one thing that sets them apart from some other companies is that they do not charge for their drive time, set-up or take-down time. I could understand that adding 2-3 more speakers would add more work and they are nicer speakers because they're wireless. But I think his explanation was not very well thought-through. My feeling is that they should charge an overall extra fee (like $100 total - not PER speaker). I shouldn't be paying $100 per 15 minutes that it takes our DJ to set up the 2-3 extra speakers!!

Despite our one complaint, I am happy to say that I've emailed him this morning to get the contract signed. DJ DONE:) I also was excited to see that in the new Washingtonian, Chris was voted the #1 DJ in the DC area.

Onto the title of my post. On several occasions, I've asked Ian to call someone (dogwalker, cable company, or more recently, possible wedding vendors and calling certain friends to get their mailing addresses). He inevitably takes his sweet precious time making these phone calls. After asking for about 3 weeks for him to call people for their mailing addresses, I finally got a tad frustrated with the procrastination. He won't even call his own hair place to make an appointment for a haircut (I have taken this over for him).

I finally talked to him about it last night to see what the deal is. He has a serious case of Phone Phobia. I looked up some information on it and it's not terribly uncommon. There are various causes of this phobia, but in Ian's case, he gets very anxious about calling all people except me, his parents and his brother. Otherwise, he must prepare for the call mentally by thinking of EXACTLY what he wants to say, questions he wants to ask, and prepare for questions that might be asked of him, or comments that are said to him. He said it's an issue for him because he's afraid people can't understand him, or that on several occasions, he has trouble understanding people over the phone because of the accent difference. His accent is not THAT different, but I am guessing his accent was much more accentuated when he first moved to the states, and that he probably developed this phobia when he first moved here (12 years ago). He mentioned that Kim has this phobia, but anyone else hate making phone calls or answering unknown numbers? Sorry to call you out Kim, but what is yours like? I am trying to find out information about it because I find it so ODD!! And the selfish part of me would love to find a solution so that I don't have to make his phone calls or call all these vendors!