My mom has her answering machine unplugged because of remodeling, so when I tried to call her while she was out earlier today, the phone just kept ringing. And it was…kind of nostalgiac. I remember the days, which may or may not be halcyon, where if nobody answered the phone you had to try and decide how long to let it ring before giving up. I actually remember some sort of phone etiquette booklet I got in school that suggested eight to ten rings, and illustrated this with a sleepy bear in an easy chair. I never hung on to much from school, but if I had realized the potential for amusing blog scans, I would have saved more.
4:14 pm, June 8, 2007 -- 14 comments
Ten. Ten rings. No more.
No less, either! Ten rings is no burden on anybody. If you’re the type of person to just let the phone ring, you deserve ten of them. But suppose somebody’s rushing back from the point of being indisposed, and they’re diving to get that phone on the ninth ring and you give up one ring too early! Well, that’s just unjust in some way.
If the phone rings more than four times with no answer, they probably have caller ID and are just screening your sorry ass.
Living in the boonies as I do (not for much longer, I hope) I’m used to it. Almost no one has a machine. I also use a rotary phone that’s been stuck to the wall for ages. When I need something advanced I unplug the line for my (dialup!) Internet and plug in a touch-tone phone. (The line doesn’t like two phones on it for some reason, so I can’t leave it plugged in. Doesn’t mind the modem, though.)
Man, I feel like the caveman that just got unthawed. Oh, and I wait five rings, a habit I believe I picked up from my mom years ago.
When my parents moved into a larger house last year, there was a rotary phone in the rec room. Still functional, but only for dialing 911. I think they took it down …
Hey, I think I had that book. The Spanish language version, but our phone company was wholly owned by GTE so there’s a chance it was the same template.
Each animal represented a bad habit. The bear actually went into hibernation while letting the phone ring. The monkey played with the phone. The elephant ate while on the phone. Et cetera.
“The elephant ate while on the phone.”
I should stop using the Internet at 4 AM. I read that as “The elephant ate the phone.” and was trying to figure out what human habit that was mimicing.
My grandparents have some weird aversion to answering machines (even though they owned one themselves up until they moved into the retirement home) so they hang up on the fourth ring (right before the answering machine picks up) presumably because they want to avoid getting a long distance charge. This is more often than not about the time I make it to the phone. Drives me nuts.
Maybe it’s a Canadian thing, but I don’t really know anybody who waits longer than 4 rings. I’ve always sort of understood the system as ‘3 rings is how long it would take someone to answer the phone if they wanted to, #4 is your just-in-case ring.’
I still have a couple of my favorite old phones left from what used to be a big collection–1930’s deco, bakelite and chrome.
We gave up the land line years ago when we got our cell phones, but I would really love it if someone would manufacture a device that would basically allow me to use my old rotary dial phones as extensions for my cell phone. Or even as a Skype setup.
I’ve mostly gotten used to my cell phone, but I do miss speaking into a real handset, and I’m enough of a retro-geek that I love a classic Western Electric rotary dial.
Tuffy, you need one of these:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7830/
So what does your mother tell her friends that you do for a living?
I don’t actually know. She probably says I’m a writer. I’ll have to ask her.
Actually, what do you tell your friends you do for a living?
My friends know what I do for a living. Usually if I need to sum up for some government form or something I say “writer.”
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