Is past perfect necessary when you are talking in chronological order?

Question

I have a question about using past perfect. I know that it's used when you want to refer to an older past event while talking about a more recent past event. But if you begin talking about past events in chronological order, is past perfect really necessary?

For example, I want to write the following sentence:

"When I called her last time, she told me that she wan't feeling well due to a cold. So when I saw her in the hallway this morning, I stopped her to ask her how she was doling."

The thing is, people have told me that I should use past perfect in the above sentence and I just can't seem to understand why.

I'm confused as ever!

Answer 1

Short answer: No. I don't see anything wrong with your example. When you talk about things in chronological order, it is fine to use simple tenses, and continuous like in your case.

Of course, if you insisted on forcing past perfect into it, you could say something like: "When I saw her in the hallway this morning, I stopped her to ask her how she was doing because when I had called her last time, she had told me that she hadn't been feeling well due to a cold". However, this is both unnatural and unnecessary.