We're Toast: Woman Makes $480 an Hour Teaching Social-Media Stunted Gen Z'ers How to Speak on Phones

Is your life difficult? That is to say, do you have to talk on the phone? If so, you’ll understand the challenges endured by the younger generation — some have texted all their lives and don’t know how to communicate with their mouths over a telephone.

Apropos of such perplexity, meet an enterprising woman.

From her website:

Mary Jane Copps is The Phone Lady.

“Conversations make things happen,” the site points out. And for those who aren’t aware, “[T]he sound of the human voice contains information that cannot be captured by words on a screen.”

The Phone Lady reveals “the psychology of, and the connection between, both phone and email communication” and “provides clients with simple, logical and easy methods for improving all of their business conversations.”

She rules the following roosts:

Sales Training — What is your team doing to inspire conversations with existing clients, past clients and prospective clients?

Sales Coaching — Build your sales process to create consistent revenue: for salespeople and independent professionals.

Customer Service Training — When you create and support excellent customer communication, the result is growth and prosperity.

But Mary Jane doesn’t only fine-tune edgy blades; she’s also available to sharpen the drawer’s dullest knives.

The communication coach explains to Business Insider:

“Gen Z have never had (phone) skills given to them. … [W]e have several generations that were never taught anything about talking on the phone, and people have removed phones from their homes.”

Millions only know how to use their thumbs:

“Gen Z and millennials have a lot less experience talking on the phone because texting and instant messaging have been the primary communication mode for their generation. Since they have a lot less experience talking on the phone, they have less comfort with it. That sets up people who are vulnerable to social anxiety to have anxiety in that situation.”

Such stress is officially known as “phone anxiety.”

Courtesy of Healthline:

That feeling of intense dread and panic associated with making phone calls? It’s real. That’s why our inner introverts are celebrating the rise of doing everything online (and the slow death of phone calls). But there’s still no escaping them completely.

During the very first stage of phone anxiety — called “Fear Begins” — it’s a fight for sheer survival:

This is the moment the fear begins creeping in, your chest tightens and your fight-or-flight instinct kicks in.

Stage Five (of six) — “Taking the Plunge” — involves “feeling your heart tightening in your chest,” during which “a little part of you might go numb for self-preservation.”

So it goes as a new crop of young Americans struggles through its World World II. Our elders had shell shock from bloody battle; these days, some are paralyzed by PTSD from talking.

But that’s okay — Mary Jane’s a veritable vegetative, special hand-rolled cigarette; take a puff and relax. Per Business Insider, she’ll fix what ails you — for just a few grams’ worth of hundred-dollar bills:

Copps charges $480 an hour for one-on-one coaching and $365 for 30-minute webinars as part of a seven-part program.

The Phone Lady reveals future leaders’ kinks to be ironed:

“A common fear is, what if someone asks me a question and I don’t know the answer? I often say, ‘For the next three days, I don’t want you to text anyone,’ and tell them to call their friends and family.

“If they’re not even used to talking on the phone to their mother, then the process is so scary. So I can’t say I’m going to make them call prospective clients, as they would just fall apart — we start with their family or someone they know. … If people aren’t ready to answer the phone, I set up a time where I randomly call them throughout the day and have practice conversations.”

It’s the new normal, not to be confused with the old capable:

“In my generation, the phone was on the wall in everyone’s house, and we were taught to answer it and make calls at a young age.”

And youngsters should probably, at some point, learn to develop relationships:

“You can’t build a relationship by email because it’s not back-and-forth, and you’re not hearing each other’s tone of voice.”

Are relationships still in vogue? Or are we all now just keyboard commandos, arguing with strangers on the internet?

Either way, Gen Z and Millennials have it much easier than phone users who came before: Not long ago, not only did we have to manage to speak to people, we also had to learn how to dial their numbers…