Can you let a phone call go unanswered, or a text unread for a while?

Better yet, I have my phone on silent, 90% of the time.
I hardly ever catch an incoming call or message instantly.
So far, no emergencies have been missed.

Yup. No problem.

Unless I’m alone, I rarely answer. And I never answer a number I don’t recognize. If it’s important they’ll leave a message.

I do not have an alert set for texts, so I have gone days without seeing one.

Easily.

All the time. There is so much phone spam that 90% of the cell calls I get are robocalls of one sort or another. If they leave a message, I’ll get it as an email within 10 seconds (I have my voice mail emailed to me) and I will call right back.

Usually my cell is in the kitchen and I am elsewhere in the house. I refuse to have it next to me 24/7. If I miss a call, I’ll see it the next time I get up.

I am a master of ignoring the phone. Answer machines and voice mail are very good at their job.

Easily and I actually shut it OFF when I sleep,I know shock!!

I have absolutely NO problem ignoring a phone call. I do it daily. My friends know to leave a message IF it’s really that important!!! IF I go out to eat with a friend, I NEVER answer another call…that’s rude!!!

I have a more difficult time ignoring texts. I don’t feel the need to respond immediately, but I do get the urge to read it immediately to see how to classify it.

My cell automatically goes into silent every night at 10:00 pm & comes back on at 7:00 am

I answer ringing phones, and respond to texts.

I absolutely can not ignore phone calls. I have too many doctors calling and they have a pool of random numbers calls come in from.

But texts are from people I know and I really don’t give much of a shit. About 98% of the texts I receive are people asking for stuff. And they can wait a few days. Seriously.. I can think of one person in the last month that asked how I was doing. Everyone else wants something. Everyone can fuck right off.

I can go all day without responding. And if someone complains, I just say, “ I was driving.” That shuts them up.

When I’m home, my cellphone is powered off.

I only answer my home phone, when it’s convenient. E.g., if my hands are wet or dirty, I let calls go to my voicemail. When I go to sleep, I turn off the ringer.

Do it all the time.

Half the time my phone is on silent for some reason and then I forget to turn it back up.

I don’t stress over missing calls. If I intentionally don’t answer, I may text back. I have a long winded friend and if it’s inconvenient for me, she’ll get a text back instead of me answering.

Sometimes I don’t look at the phone for hours but I will try to respond to a text if I see it.

I have never had someone knock on the bathroom door telling me my phone is ringing.

My boss is constantly looking at her phone and it makes a series of six chimes every time a text comes in. I think it’s rude of her to have that going constantly. She is one who can’t resist picking the phone up, looking at it, poking it. It’s rude and annoying and I tell her to shut off the alerts when we’re in a meeting. She’s also my friend so she doesn’t take offense.

The etiquette group on FB that was the inspiration for this q posted the question about speakerphone. The poster was at a salon and since her hair was being colored, she said she could not put the phone to her ear so she used speakerphone, and was asking if that’s rude. To me, that’s rude. Nobody else wants to have to listen to your convo. To me, that’s the perfect opportunity to text a response “Will call back later.”

@jca2 I was in the lobby of a rec center yesterday, because I had to call my husband (I left a Zumba class to call him) and the only person in the lobby was the employee at the front desk. 2 minutes into the call I switched to speaker, because I needed my hands free, but it wasn’t constant chatter, we were looking at a diagram. Then, a couple walked into the lobby, so I switched back to having to hold the phone to my ear. This couple sat down in the sofa right next to my chair, and the husband made a phone call, and basically it was competing with my conversation, and he was loud. I got up, walked over to the other grouping of chairs to get some distance. I don’t see why they didn’t sit over there to make their call rather than being right on top of me. I felt like they showed bad judgement.

I agree. How can any one bear to make a fool of themselves by yelling into a cell phone around other people? It’s like they want everyone who can hear to take their side or something. I guess they don’t consider themselves foolish.

Without any context as to the woman and/or the call, such a blanket judgement is silly.

I answer the phone when I think I should, depending on the caller and the circumstance.
And really, how does acknowledging or answering a text (except in few very specific circumstances) affect anyone else?
If I hear any of the signals alerting me to a call or a text I always at least check.

Context is everything.

@JLeslie: It would have been funny if you started saying to the person you were talking to, something about the guy on the phone, like “what? I can’t hear you. This jerk came in with his wife and baby and he’s so loud. Yeah, he’s dressed like Erkel” or something like that. (sometimes I think about doing something like that LOL). Then if the person called you out on it you could say “excuse me? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”