I HATE the Fecking Telephone!!

I HATE talking on the telephone, unless, for some reason, it is the most efficient (for me) way to accomplish a task. 

I am told that many of the reasons have to do with my being on the autism spectrum, though some of them (I believe) just make sense anyway. 

• I can't think about my responses without awkward silences, usually causing the other person to get mad at me and think I'm ignoring them.
• I don't know when it's my turn to talk (versus the other person pausing for a second), which makes people mad at me for either interrupting or not answering them at the right time. 
• I don't get the conventions regarding when it's time to hang up. I assume once someone has said, "bye", I can hang up, but no... Apparently, I'm actually supposed to wait until I am sure the person doesn't have more to say, even though they signalled the conversation was over by voicing a farewell. Then if I hang up before that, I am rude (again, making people mad at me). So then I am often sitting there in awkward silence (are you seeing a theme here?) waiting for the other person to either say something else or hang up.
• I can't focus on a phone conversation NEARLY as well as I can with a written one. 
• Phone conversations have no archive to refer back to to recall exactly what was said. It is left up to our notoriously faulty memories.