We are so few at HCO WW and covering so many fronts that we cannot accept the phone calls that keep coming in. In the first place a transatlantic call takes usually an hour or two of waiting by one of us before it is fully connected. Such calls have taken 12 hrs to complete. And we have missed completion so often after such wasted time and have had such bad inaudible connections even with domestic calls in England, that it's no phone.
Use telegrams and cables instead, they're faster. They have a memory. We can handle them without missing data not put down after a phone call.
In the manor staff office we have a Telex. That's a teletype like in the telegraph office. About five minutes after you file your telegram or cable it comes complete and accurate out of our Telex, typed with copies. These don't get lost. They get instant attention from the Communication guard.
When a small group such as ours at HCO WW are handling indirectly several hundred thousand people, and are handling directly, at any given time, a few thousand and intimately a few hundred scattered all over Earth, we have to have a Communication discipline to get anything done. You're part of that Comm system, so if you want something done, be brief, to the point, and use:
And you'll be heard fast.
Be pointless, use phones, come in person, and you won't be heard.
You are much closer to HCO WW at your letter box or the telegraph office than you would be standing at the Manor's front door. We're proud of our Comm system. Use it!