Modern Phone Etiquette

Lutherf said:

It's OCD or ADD or one of those things. We didn't have that stuff growing up so I'm pretty sure that cell phones, computers and cable TV caused it all.

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Well, I was going to blame the emergence of fast-food restaurants. :lol:

Lutherf said:

Hmmm...maybe we both know a lot of the same people.:lol:

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Maybe? LOL

People like that are too wrapped up in their own head. Patience! It's a thing.

nota bene said:

Well, I was going to blame the emergence of fast-food restaurants. :lol:

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There's something to be said for that. Sitting down to dinner with Mom, Dad and assorted siblings...without the TV on, without an ipad to keep little Jimmy entertained, etc...did instill a bit of civility that seems to have waned in recent years.

mike2810 said:

You see it that way. I don't. Hence the age difference I stated. For me personal contact is voice or eye to eye contact. Not some text, not some tweet.

but hey, each to their own.

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Hey, I'm an old guy, and I think texting is a great form of communication. I rarely have time to get stuck in a lengthy conversation, and texting is a great way to avoid that. You can fire off a text and get on with whatever you're doing.

I love my smart phone. I always tell customers to contact me however they wish, phone, email, or text. I'm open to all forms of communication. . And many of my customers are older folk too. :shrug: Come join us in the 21st century bro.

The only thing is, I don't go for all that text lingo, I type everything in full words. I'm old fashioned that way. :mrgreen:

I like texting too--more control when you write. But my kid wants to constantly text, as she's doing right now, when a 5-minute phone conversation would be much more efficient.

I'm old-fashioned too. I cap sentence beginnings and--get this--correct my spelling. I won't lie; I love how my phone generally anticipates what I was trying to say and auto-corrects. But it can be very stubborn too.

Josie said:

I'd be annoyed if anyone called to just ask if I want to go out for lunch - just text me.

I'd be SUPER annoyed if anyone continued to call me and leave messages.

I remember back in the days of instant messaging, I had a friend who would type "Hi!" and when I wouldn't answer right away because I wasn't at my computer or I was busy, he would keep typing things like "Are you there?" "Hello?" "Hello????????" Ugh.

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This. Like, just text. I get talking when you just want to talk and not meet up, but if you just want to coordinate plans to meet in person, just text. So much simpler.

Lutherf said:

There's something to be said for that. Sitting down to dinner with Mom, Dad and assorted siblings...without the TV on, without an ipad to keep little Jimmy entertained, etc...did instill a bit of civility that seems to have waned in recent years.

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Now we become impatient with a slow drive-through line. Why, the other day, I couldn't find my universal remote but remembered how to turn a TV on by touching it...and couldn't find the on/off button. :lol:

Lutherf said:

So you call someone's cell and they don't answer. The reason for your call is just casual or not particularly important. Say, for example, you just want to know if they would like to meet for lunch tomorrow. It's just past lunch time today so you've got roughly a whole day to sort this out.

Anyway, you call and they don't answer so you leave a voice message. 5 minutes go by and they still haven't called back so you immediately try their work number, send a text and call the cell again. Is that really necessary? Is it so damned important that you answer your phone right ****ing now that all this stuff is necessary?

I mean, I have clients answering their phone while we're meeting. It's just kind of normal these days. I even find myself answering my office phone is my secretary has stepped out even when I have a client. I apologize but I do it anyway.

Anyway, if I get a call and either don't recognize the number or know from who's calling that it's not important I don't answer. If I'm in a meeting I turn the phone off. Am I just being a cranky old fart in all this or am I missing a change in etiquette?

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I tell everyone to text first. I work wierd hours and non-emergency calls while on-the-clock are a no-no. The boss looks the other way when it comes to texts (as long as it doesn't become a problem).

Also, using the phone while driving is illegal in my state, and most of my at-home time is spent sleeping.....long story short I ask people to just text lol. I'm repeating myself [emoji14] A call is great but a call is an event I need to make time for.

Text. I get your msg faster and can tell you what beer I'll bring faster than a call

I don't answer phones at work mainly because it's in another room from where I am and I don't answer my mobile phone when out and about unless I recognise the number.

If anyone wants to talk, I prefer face to face communication. I know from students however they just don't know how to deal with phone calls because they are so used to Snapchat or similar where they don't even know each other's phone numbers.

If you are not on my contact list I will not pick up the phone, and if it is that important, you can leave a voice mail.

My phone is always OFF while meeting clients, or when having lunch with someone.

"Be where you are"

Lutherf said:

So you call someone's cell and they don't answer. The reason for your call is just casual or not particularly important. Say, for example, you just want to know if they would like to meet for lunch tomorrow. It's just past lunch time today so you've got roughly a whole day to sort this out.

Anyway, you call and they don't answer so you leave a voice message. 5 minutes go by and they still haven't called back so you immediately try their work number, send a text and call the cell again. Is that really necessary? Is it so damned important that you answer your phone right ****ing now that all this stuff is necessary?

I mean, I have clients answering their phone while we're meeting. It's just kind of normal these days. I even find myself answering my office phone is my secretary has stepped out even when I have a client. I apologize but I do it anyway.

Anyway, if I get a call and either don't recognize the number or know from who's calling that it's not important I don't answer. If I'm in a meeting I turn the phone off. Am I just being a cranky old fart in all this or am I missing a change in etiquette?

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My feeling is that phones are used differently now. Increasingly I find myself using email or WhatsApp for things I would have the phone a few years ago. I also see this changing behavior in friends and business associates

Lutherf said:

So you call someone's cell and they don't answer. The reason for your call is just casual or not particularly important. Say, for example, you just want to know if they would like to meet for lunch tomorrow. It's just past lunch time today so you've got roughly a whole day to sort this out.

Anyway, you call and they don't answer so you leave a voice message. 5 minutes go by and they still haven't called back so you immediately try their work number, send a text and call the cell again. Is that really necessary? Is it so damned important that you answer your phone right ****ing now that all this stuff is necessary?

I mean, I have clients answering their phone while we're meeting. It's just kind of normal these days. I even find myself answering my office phone is my secretary has stepped out even when I have a client. I apologize but I do it anyway.

Anyway, if I get a call and either don't recognize the number or know from who's calling that it's not important I don't answer. If I'm in a meeting I turn the phone off. Am I just being a cranky old fart in all this or am I missing a change in etiquette?

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I'm with you. I look at it this way... my cell phone is for MY convenience, not yours. I don't have a land line, by the way.

I program friends, family, tradespeople I work with, my doctors, pharmacy, etc etc as Contacts. If a call comes in that's not a Contact? Off to voicemail it goes. But if I'm out with friends or whatever, I turn my phone off. Most all of my friends and family do as well. If I forget to turn it off, I immediately send any calls to voice mail.

Your office phone is a little different, in my opinion. I might answer that in the circumstances you describe depending upon who I was with. That might be less annoying than a ringing phone. If I was a first-time customer, however, and you did much more than very briefly get rid of it, I'd probably be perturbed.

You aren't missing a change in etiquette. You're witnessing a DECLINE in etiquette.

Lutherf said:

So you call someone's cell and they don't answer. The reason for your call is just casual or not particularly important. Say, for example, you just want to know if they would like to meet for lunch tomorrow. It's just past lunch time today so you've got roughly a whole day to sort this out.

Anyway, you call and they don't answer so you leave a voice message. 5 minutes go by and they still haven't called back so you immediately try their work number, send a text and call the cell again. Is that really necessary? Is it so damned important that you answer your phone right ****ing now that all this stuff is necessary?

I mean, I have clients answering their phone while we're meeting. It's just kind of normal these days. I even find myself answering my office phone is my secretary has stepped out even when I have a client. I apologize but I do it anyway.

Anyway, if I get a call and either don't recognize the number or know from who's calling that it's not important I don't answer. If I'm in a meeting I turn the phone off. Am I just being a cranky old fart in all this or am I missing a change in etiquette?

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I don't call first any more unless it's a business contact. If it is something urgent I text them to please call me ASAP. If I want to chat with someone I text them a short message " are you available for a call"

I screen all incoming calls. I no longer own a landline. I am available 24/7 for most people who are important to me. If I don't answer you within 8 hours take the hint.

As for email I only use it for work purposes. All little jokes and isn't this beautiful stuff never gets opened. Life is too short to clog it up with unnecessary junk.

joG said:

My feeling is that phones are used differently now. Increasingly I find myself using email or WhatsApp for things I would have the phone a few years ago. I also see this changing behavior in friends and business associates

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I think you're right. Phones are no longer just phones as we once knew them. GPS, screens, all amazing. But I regard my cell pretty much as just an enhanced phone. I am not tethered to it, and it's generally not my entertainment center or social lifeline. I remain amazed by the people whose every move is with phone in hand. Yikes, who wants to be this "connected"?

Lutherf said:

It seems that a few people had this answer and, frankly, it's not something I had considered. My first thought is always "phone call". It's just something that's kind of been baked in over the past 50 years. If I don't get an answer or get their voice mail I then text. That's where it stops. Unless it's a house on fire emergency I don't try any other contact.

One other thing, when people do call they rarely ask "do you have a minute?" any more. They generally just start rolling along with whatever they have to say and don't even think that maybe you're on the way out the door or in line at the bank or whatever.

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Yup. And you know, I think all of us of the younger gen sort of lump the older gen into the list of exceptions for phone calls, because we know that's just how you've been doing it for all this time. I get annoyed if one of my 30-year-old friends does that. I didn't when it was my 60-year-old dad, ya know? Techy as he was, and as proficient as he was with texting, sometimes he just called for reasons I wouldn't because that's how he did things for the first 50 years of his life. We get that.

But yeah, the people who do still call seem to have lost that etiquette. To be honest, my memory of phone calls as standard is a bit foggy -- texting was very much a thing by the time I hit high school, and even before that, we still had AIM, MySpace, and other venues for organizing information or daily little communications besides just calls. So in effect, I only ever called good friends and family, and even that was tapering off by the time I was in my teens.

But I do recall being taught to frickin' ask if someone has time to talk to me. And that definitely seems to have gone away, for the people who are still calling for no particular purpose, and don't have their age as a reason.

Perhaps it's that no one's teaching them anymore (since today's phone call etiquette is simply, "Don't do it unless there's an actual reason"), and the nature of phone calls sort of encourages rudeness if you don't get taught otherwise. It is quite a jarring interjection into someone's day compared to the little "ping" of a text, if you think about it. In the absence of etiquette lessons for an aging technology, and in this age of limited sense of social boundaries at times, perhaps they simply just don't realize how rude they're being.

It's a balance, I think, and tons and tons of people get it wrong on either side of the generation divide. There are certainly a lot of people in my gen who want to try to drag me into a serious conversation in text, and I am just not having that. I dropped my smartphone for 2 years to try to make that point that I am not going to respond to your bible-length text about personal issues when what we really need to do is actually sit down with each other. Even my older boyfriend does that sometimes. Oh, the enormous WhatsApp messages!

TL;DR People are annoying sometimes. :lol:

Serenity said:

I'm under 35.. Perhaps it's a cultural thing but people here wouldn't generally get annoyed if someone called to ask them to have lunch. Much easier than texting back and forth to sort out time, place, etc and it's much more personal than just a text. I don't give out my phone number to people I don't want to talk to talk to or keep in touch with either.

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Huh, really? I feel like when I was in NZ in '09/'10, it was still sorta similar to how it is in the US and the UK (i.e. don't call unless it's important), to sort of round out the colonies and their motherland, as it were. :lol: Do younger people still call for casual stuff in Oz?

I don't know if it's easier. We may not be 100% sure if I have time to meet up, and texting makes it easier to update without constant interruption as you get that information. Personally, I have sort of a "standard" set of things I do with most of my friends, so I don't find that arranging a place takes much effort.

Personally, I am absolutely DELIGHTED that texting has taken over communications that aren't time-sensitive or otherwise important. I am someone who jars easily, and I absolutely despise the sound of phones ringing and being ripped out of whatever I'm doing rather suddenly. I'm already on edge by the time I even answer the phone, and then I have to deal with a conversation where I have no facial cues, which I hate, and where there's this weird imbalance of sound going into only one ear. I'm sensitive to sound, yes, and it makes me hate just about everything about phone calls.

Even when I was a kid and they were the main way of communicating from afar, my list of who I called with any regularity was probably only 3 people long. Most people weren't worth dealing with the phone itself, to me.

These days, my phone is permanently on vibrate (I don't even remember what my ringtone sounds like), and if I do have to talk on the phone, I do it on speaker.

Northern Light said:

Depends on who I'm communicating with. People have different standards. I'm sort of in that middle generation between the old way and the new way. My older friends don't text that well and they prefer to talk by phone. The younger generation is anti-social and doesn't like to use their voice, so I just text.

Personally I prefer texts for short, trivial things or for sending reminders. For anything more I prefer voice conversations.

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[bold emphasis added by bubba]

but is etiquette what YOU prefer?

text first, unless a phone call is essential or there is a emergency
if you call more than once, there had better be an emergency, because your voicemail was ample notice

there are many, many needy people who need contact - yours
a friend is like that. so overweight he can only leave his home for essential needs, texted me this morning with a newsflash: just call saul will begin on april 10. really?

mike2810 said:

I can see a age difference in this thread. Me being on the older side. People wanting text messages vs. an actual voice conversation. People wanting instant replies to voice messages or text rather than just letting it slide till the person contacts you or you have time to call them back.

Glad I don't have a smart phone. My old flip phone does just fine. I can make phone calls or leave a voice message. If the person doesn't call back, oh well. I just move on.

What ever happened to personal contact and communication?

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rendered largely obsolete by 21st century technology


ditto for teaching kids cursive writing ... much like our generation no longer was taught calligraphy - because of this thing called the printing press

SmokeAndMirrors said:

Yup. And you know, I think all of us of the younger gen sort of lump the older gen into the list of exceptions for phone calls, because we know that's just how you've been doing it for all this time. I get annoyed if one of my 30-year-old friends does that. I didn't when it was my 60-year-old dad, ya know? Techy as he was, and as proficient as he was with texting, sometimes he just called for reasons I wouldn't because that's how he did things for the first 50 years of his life. We get that.

But yeah, the people who do still call seem to have lost that etiquette. To be honest, my memory of phone calls as standard is a bit foggy -- texting was very much a thing by the time I hit high school, and even before that, we still had AIM, MySpace, and other venues for organizing information or daily little communications besides just calls. So in effect, I only ever called good friends and family, and even that was tapering off by the time I was in my teens.

But I do recall being taught to frickin' ask if someone has time to talk to me. And that definitely seems to have gone away, for the people who are still calling for no particular purpose, and don't have their age as a reason.

Perhaps it's that no one's teaching them anymore (since today's phone call etiquette is simply, "Don't do it unless there's an actual reason"), and the nature of phone calls sort of encourages rudeness if you don't get taught otherwise. It is quite a jarring interjection into someone's day compared to the little "ping" of a text, if you think about it. In the absence of etiquette lessons for an aging technology, and in this age of limited sense of social boundaries at times, perhaps they simply just don't realize how rude they're being.

It's a balance, I think, and tons and tons of people get it wrong on either side of the generation divide. There are certainly a lot of people in my gen who want to try to drag me into a serious conversation in text, and I am just not having that. I dropped my smartphone for 2 years to try to make that point that I am not going to respond to your bible-length text about personal issues when what we really need to do is actually sit down with each other. Even my older boyfriend does that sometimes. Oh, the enormous WhatsApp messages!

TL;DR People are annoying sometimes. :lol:

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just wondering if your younger boyfriend acts any differently

justabubba said:

just wondering if your younger boyfriend acts any differently

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Which one? :mrgreen:

nota bene said:

I think you're right. Phones are no longer just phones as we once knew them. GPS, screens, all amazing. But I regard my cell pretty much as just an enhanced phone. I am not tethered to it, and it's generally not my entertainment center or social lifeline. I remain amazed by the people whose every move is with phone in hand. Yikes, who wants to be this "connected"?

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The real change will come, when the communication center is connected to the brain.

nota bene said:

I like texting too--more control when you write. But my kid wants to constantly text, as she's doing right now, when a 5-minute phone conversation would be much more efficient.

I'm old-fashioned too. I cap sentence beginnings and--get this--correct my spelling. I won't lie; I love how my phone generally anticipates what I was trying to say and auto-corrects. But it can be very stubborn too.

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Lol, I do the same thing. But I do use some slang, just like I do here on the forum. I use voice-to-text quite a bit, then go back and correct any errors.

Lutherf said:

So you call someone's cell and they don't answer. The reason for your call is just casual or not particularly important. Say, for example, you just want to know if they would like to meet for lunch tomorrow. It's just past lunch time today so you've got roughly a whole day to sort this out.

Anyway, you call and they don't answer so you leave a voice message. 5 minutes go by and they still haven't called back so you immediately try their work number, send a text and call the cell again. Is that really necessary? Is it so damned important that you answer your phone right ****ing now that all this stuff is necessary?

I mean, I have clients answering their phone while we're meeting. It's just kind of normal these days. I even find myself answering my office phone is my secretary has stepped out even when I have a client. I apologize but I do it anyway.

Anyway, if I get a call and either don't recognize the number or know from who's calling that it's not important I don't answer. If I'm in a meeting I turn the phone off. Am I just being a cranky old fart in all this or am I missing a change in etiquette?

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If I'm in a meeting, the meeting is priority #1. All calls... unless you're expecting a possible emergency update on something, and then the person should warn you of the possibility... should be #2. Phones work in both directions, and they can call back when we're done.

Barring unusual circumstances I will not answer my phone, and I get put off when they answer theirs.

Going back to the late 70s and early 80s (long before cell phones were common) my friends and family were always annoyed over my phone policy. If I didn't feel like answering, I simply didn't. Period. I also got Caller ID as soon as it became available. That was a Godsend to me. Fast forward to today, with my cell phone and built-in Caller ID, if I don't recognize the number, I still won't answer.

countryboy said:

Hey, I'm an old guy, and I think texting is a great form of communication. I rarely have time to get stuck in a lengthy conversation, and texting is a great way to avoid that. You can fire off a text and get on with whatever you're doing.

I love my smart phone. I always tell customers to contact me however they wish, phone, email, or text. I'm open to all forms of communication. . And many of my customers are older folk too. :shrug: Come join us in the 21st century bro.

The only thing is, I don't go for all that text lingo, I type everything in full words. I'm old fashioned that way. :mrgreen:

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Same here. Spare me the lingo. Be an articulate adult or don't bother me. (I'm kind of curmudgeonly that way.)

I never sent a text until about 3 years ago, and now I love it. Like you say, it's great for short communication. For longer stuff I prefer email. I've never been a phone person.