It used to be you picked up a landline, which had physical buttons and at its smallest was still 3x larger than a smartphone, dialed the actual location you wanted to call (instead of a corporate call center) and you could actually talk to someone with access to the store computer/government records/dinner reservations that actually fucking applied to you.
You could also actually hold the phone with your shoulder without it hurting, which freed your hands up to cook or eat, or type on a computer, etc. it didn’t require an accessory you had to keep charged. It was built into the phone’s physical design!!!
It sucks more to do phone calls now! Like it just does!!!