What is your point of reference in history? When did people ever have to deal with a sole or multiple "hey can we talk" followed by an unspecified amount of tim

What is your point of reference in history? When did people ever have to deal with a sole or multiple "hey can we talk" followed by an unspecified amount of time and supposedly handled it more gracefully? At the top of my head that is not how communication ever worked at a large scale and, certainly, hearing those words from a spouse or being asked into the bosses office without knowing why, has always been pretty anxiety inducing for a lot of people.