Friendship and Phone Etiquette: The Top 5 Mistakes Friends Make on the Phone

Building and maintaining friendships requires a number of important skills. One that is often overlooked has to do with phone etiquette. By making mistakes in this area, you could be inadvertently upsetting existing friends and driving away new ones. Here are the five worst offenses:

1. Forgetting to “delete” the call

When a friend answers the phone in response to your call, remember to identify yourself first and ask about their hours. Callers often go about their own agenda, not thinking they might be disturbing their friends.

Example: “Hi Bill, this is Ron. I just called to chat and catch up. Is this a good time to talk?”

Be sure to identify yourself because some people are not good at recognizing voices, especially if they have just met, and may feel uncomfortable having to guess. More troubling, when you don’t ask if your friends can talk, you put them in the awkward position of having to interrupt them and explain that they can’t stay on the phone.

2. Abusive call waiting

No one likes to feel discounted, but call waiting users often make people feel that way. When friends of an acquaintance of mine ask him to hold on call waiting, he replies, “Hey, what am I, chopped liver?” I agree. I think if you contacted me on the phone, you got there first and I owe you a full call.

If you feel you must use call waiting, do two things. First, limit the number of interruptions. I know people who put down the phone three or four times during a conversation to check for incoming calls. As I sit twiddling my thumbs, I fight the urge to hang up in disgust.

Second, tell the person already on the line with you that you’re expecting an important call and will need to interrupt when it comes in. That way, your friend will be warned and hopefully won’t feel fired.

Some people use call waiting for valid reasons. A relative may have health problems or an ongoing crisis may require her immediate availability. They may be waiting for a guest who will call with arrival times or directions.

I suspect that other people obsessively respond to the call waiting beep for fear of missing something. Sometimes I joke with a friend who can’t ignore the beep: “You better hurry, you don’t want to miss out on that $200 million from Publisher’s Clearing House!”

3. Talk nonstop

Some people have difficulty ending a phone call. We are often afraid to hear from them, especially when we have things to do. From time to time I talk to acquaintances who just don’t know how to put a period at the end of a sentence. They connect each statement to the next with the word “and,” carefully avoiding an equal exchange. The answering machine filtering option was invented for such people.

Usually marathon talkers ignore hang up signs. When we try to end the conversation, they often ignore our efforts and fail to recognize the generally accepted signals that people use when they want to get off the phone. Here are a couple of examples:

“So, it’s okay, Karen, I’m so glad you called. It has been a pleasure hearing it from you.”

“Well Steve, this was fun! Let’s talk again soon.”

Look at the sentences in bold. Using the past tense is the most common way to let others know that you want to end a call.

I feel trapped every time someone ignores the signs and continues to broach new topics. It’s a difficult dilemma because I don’t want to be rude, but I want to get off the phone.

People are marathon talkers for a variety of reasons, including feeling lonely or bored, wanting to vent or gossip, or needing an audience to entertain. Whatever the reason, unsurprisingly, they leave numerous voicemail messages for people who, mysteriously, are almost always out of the house.

4. Multitask

Many people pride themselves on their ability to do extra “productive” things while on the phone. Some can pull it off and their phone partners don’t notice their divided approach, but most can’t.

Here are the giveaways: They don’t always track talking points properly, they have an intermittent vague or distant tone of voice, and they make noise doing whatever they’re doing. I heard ripping paper (checking your mail), running water (doing dishes), crying babies (changing diapers or feeding them), and, I kid you not, the sound of tinkling (sitting on the pot).

Most of us prefer to chat with people who can give us their undivided attention.

5. Misuse of voicemail

Without a doubt, voicemail is a great convenience, but many people unknowingly annoy their friends by abusing it. Here are some guidelines:

As with person-to-person calls, always start your message by identifying yourself and then keep it short. Most people don’t want to listen to long, buzzing messages. They want a fast one that they can write and act on.

Also, do your best to structure your message to avoid unnecessary callbacks. For example, if you want to reschedule an appointment, say the following: “Kathy, I’d like to change our appointment from seven to seven-thirty. If that’s okay, don’t call back. Otherwise, call me at 555.” -4343 and we’ll figure something out.”

Leave your phone number each time (not everyone has it memorized) and say it slowly. Be sure to leave the correct number if you are somewhere other than home and you don’t have your cell phone.

Since most people already know how voicemail works, use a short greeting. I once returned a call to a client whose greeting consisted of her five-year-old son snapping her fingers and humming the entire theme from the TV show Partridge Family twice. He was trapped in phone hell.

For years, my Uncle Tony offered me a short, reassuring message: “You know what to do. Do it.”

However, my all-time favorite is the phone message from a musician friend. He wins the award shortly when he says, “You alone!”