For the last one - meteoric rise of services like JustEat meant that I haven't had to ring anyone to order food for at least 8 years now. If your restaurant is not on justeat/Uber eats/you have your own website that allows ordering, then I'm not interested in ordering from you. Also, if you order through a phone how do you pay? In cash??

Even when you order from JustEat, don’t you give the delivery driver a number to call when they arrive (or get lost)? They almost never come directly to my apartment or office; I usually get a call saying they’re downstairs or outside (if parking is bad) instead.

In...olden times when people ordered by talking to other people, you’d often pay cash. Some places would take credit cards, usually by reading the number out loud. One fancy place let you type the numbers in with the touch pad.

My local pizza shop gives a cash discount, so yes, I do pay in cash. My local bagel shop only accepts cash, so I pay in cash there too.

I don’t understand? Is paying with cash a problem?

It is if you live a mostly cash-less life. I don’t typically carry any cash on me and don’t pay in cash, which means I often also don’t have any cash at home.

Card payments, contactless payments, Apple Pay, metro/travel cards and banks/financial institutions with fancy mobile apps have meant that I rarely if ever need cash.

No, but it's less convenient, less trackable, and less safe than e.g. a credit card.

You can read the card number to them on the phone. This is what we did back in the day back when credit cards were common but online ordering was much of a thing yet.

I am not the person you are replying to, but I would like to point out that my job never calls me (and if they expected me to be reachable they would give me a work phone), I keep in touch with my friends via my computer, and I order pizza online. Medical appointments are still done over the phone, though, but not always.

I wouldn't go as far as to have no phone number whatsoever, but living without one doesn't seem entirely crazy to me.

I lived without a phone number for about 9 months a few years ago. My phone was basically a WiFi device. I really enjoyed this time and am considering doing it again. I only stopped because my brother got annoyed and bought me a new SIM, but nowadays he doesn’t call me much and uses internet for voice. Even my mother uses WhatsApp for voice.

Having a WiFi-only device (as opposed to a data-only one) did mean I had to plan things a bit, just like I had to do before mobile phones became such a popular thing. It wasn’t a big deal at all.

My current job doesn’t call me very often, but recruiters and HR folks love the phone. Likewise, small businesses are way easier to deal with on the phone vs. online (larger ones are a toss-up).

I guess I’m convinced that it could be done, but I’m less convinced that it makes sense, and baffled as to why you’d pay for a phone and then go to such lengths to avoid using it.

My friends are smart enough to use modern means of communication