Phone Etiquette In The 21st Century

You may not even be old enough to have had this in school. I remember my grade school teachers in first and second grade teaching phone etiquette. That's right, how to act properly on the phone.

Do you even remember the right way to answer the phone? I had to think waaaaaay back. Somewhere behind the cobwebs in my brain was the old proper method. I admit that I don't use it either, but the principles are sound. I remember through the years growing up, someone would call and first thing say "Who is this?"

I always thought, "Duh, you called me, who do you think it is?"

In a way, they were not all wrong. In another way, they were all wrong. I love stuff like this. Whenever you answer the phone, the "proper" etiquette was to say "Johnson Residence, this is Bob. Who is calling?" See why I said they were not all wrong? If the phone was answered properly, they would not have asked. However, the "proper" etiquette when you call is to identify yourself, and state the nature of your call, and ask for who you mean to call.

So where did etiquette go? I am not sure, but I also not so sure proper etiquette is the right thing to do. My thinking behind this is security. I may be a bit more paranoid than most, but that is why it may not be proper to identify yourself right away when people call. Maybe the are fishing to see who is there? The reason we often don't Identify ourselves, is technology. Yes, good old caller ID. Often when people call me I say "Hey Mark, how's it going?" The point is, common courtesy should still be practiced.

My question now is, in the age of caller ID, isn't it common courtesy to identify yourself there when you call. I have missed calls on my phone and I have no idea who they are if it is a cell number. I know you don't have the option to identify yourself on cell phones, so if you are not in their phone already, the receiver has no idea whose number it is.

Reverse cell phone lookup services to the rescue. Reverse mobile phone lookups like Reverse Phone Detective, or Reverse Mobile can provide you with the registered user of the phone, name, address, and sometimes a bit more. There is a small charge, but well worth it in my opinion.

If you want to know how to find out whose number it is - see my lens on Squidoo

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Mobile Cellular Phone . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.