In Australia, it’s considered rude to call someone’s home number after about 9pm.
Is this just an Australian thing? Or perhaps just a NSW thing?
Nah, that’s pretty traditional here as well. My phone will ring later, but only my very close friends who know my schedule would call after about 9ish.
I live in Oklahoma, and that sounds about right to me. Unless I know someone very well, and have reason to believe that he or she wouldn’t be bothered by a late phone call, I wouldn’t call after 9pm.
They got phones in Oklahoma now?
Yep, but they are the wind-up kind like you see in them old movies. And we have to stretch waxed string in between all the shacks to use 'em.
No, it’s definitely a universal thing, although not universal enough that everyone agrees on it, as is evidenced in this old thread.
For this Australian, it’s probably:
Unsolicited business calls: Strictly business hours 9 - 5. Beyond that, I’m having dinner, or I just don’t want to be fucked with. Bugger off.
More familiar business calls (regulars) or family and friends: 8:30am - 8:30pm**
Family and very close friends who know I’ll be up late: up until 11pm or midnight (I work afternoon shift and stay up late).
When I was with my Chinese ex-wife, one of the (very few) cultural difficulties was the habit of all manner of her friends and family ringing up until midnight. In my case, it’s only those who know I’m awake and alone in the house who do it, but for these guys, they’d call and if the call got me out of bed (say, if the person they wanted to speak to wasn’t there), there was no apology or even suggestion that I might have a right to be annoyed).
For me, if the phone rings very, very late at night, it’s a heart-racing thing of possible urgent, bad news. Bad form.
I’d agree with the 9.00pm cut-off for general calls. Close friends and family up to 10.00pm. Anything after that, and I’m assuming there’s been a death in the family.
Yes, exactly.
When I was in Ireland friends would call late (after 11pm) at night.
“What’s wrong?” I would ask.
“Nothing - just ringing to find out whatcha doin.”
“Playing ‘hungry hungry hippos’ with the Pope. Now piss off.”
Doesn’t the string get snarled up in the corn?
Nine o’clock is a good cut off time for calls. In fact, it should be fairly important news after eight pm, especially to a house with small children. It might be acceptable to extend the cut off time to 10pm on weekends. Maybe.
During my student teaching, I was required to call all parents on a regular basis. I’d start around six thirty, hoping not to interrupt dinner and was usually successful at that. I never called after eight pm. One family surprised the heck out of me. I called at 7pm and was shocked to find out I’d woken the whole family. They went to bed at six pm. No reason, like they farmed, or had a commute, they just went to bed at 6.
My Oklahoman grandparents had one of the wind up phones for ages, and never took it out after they switched to the skinny black stand phone with the cone-shaped earpiece. I loved to play with both of them when I was a munchkin.
My family doesn’t like to get phone calls from random people after ten pm. I think that’s because we wind down during the ten o’clock news before vegging out with Jay and Conan (late-night talk-show hosts) before bed.
The important people have various cell-phone numbers to household people, and will call those numbers before trying the house phone when it’s late. Then we know it’s going to be just a chat, and (usually) not important news. If the house-phone should ring after ten, we usually let that person know that the parents don’t like calls after ten, and to call a cell next time.
I don’t care what time people call. If I don’t want to answer it, I won’t. What’s voice mail for if not that?
In our home the phone ringers go off at 9pm. We do have a light up phone that if we are in our family room we will see to answer, but after the ringing waking my children at night, we said no more.
What do you consider too early to call? I would say before 9, but my mother-in-lawish frequently calls at 7:30am and thinks nothing of it.
I use the 9pm rule as well. The only person who I will call after this in a non-emergency is my fiancé and my parents. I would call my parents up to about 10pm, and my fiancé up to about 11pm. It pretty much works the same the other way around.
What, no phone sex?
My last roommate and I had very different schedules. He worked in a bank, so he’d be gone from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm-ish. I work in a bar, and go out often, so I’d often be stumbling home at 6:00 am as he’d be getting up for work. His friends and family would sometimes call as early as 7:00 am, and my friends saw nothing odd about calling me up at 12:00 or 1:00 in the morning. It worked for us - I told my friends never to call my home phone late, so it’d only be my cell phone ringing at un-Ogly hours of the night which wouldn’t wake up the roommate. And after a late night, there was no way a phone ringing in the morning would wake me up, so I didn’t mind my roomie’s early morning calls.
When I was growing up, my parents would turn off the ringer at 9:00, and turn it back on once us kidlets were well asleep in case of emergency middle of the night calls.
Ahh I’m so sorry about that, I can’t report my own post for messed up smileys, can someone report my post/let me know which mod to contact?
I always thought the rule of thumb was, no calls before 9 am, no calls after 9 pm. Of course, my friends and I would call each other around 8 or so and then gab until maybe, oh, 11?
When I was in fourth grade, a friend of mine in Girl Scouts used to call at like, 6 am or whatever, or really late at night, and she’d get really rude when my parents told her I was asleep. Once she called on Christmas Eve, at 4 pm, just as we were sitting down to eat with my grandparents and got really rude with my father when he told her I couldn’t come to the phone. But then, her whole family was really messed up.
Consider it done. 