I answer my mom’s cell all the time-- because she doesn’t keep it on her, and is always confused about how to answer it.
So I’ll grab it, and tell the caller I’m bringing them to my mother, and sometimes they will tell me to slow down they’d like to chat with me for a minute.
My mom has enough cognitive decline that sometimes people would rather make plans with someone other than her.
Nun-uh, I’ve seen that movie — you answer an unfamiliar phone, the next thing you know, some crop duster is trying to kill you in a cornfield next to a lonely road. Even if you get the drop on him, the price of gas goes up a nickel the next day due to the tanker incident and it’s your fault.
Back in the day, my work had “group phones”. One phone for every 2-4 engineers. No voice mail. So we’d answer our group phone, but no one else’s.
Until one day some high level dude came through and complained that “no one is answering the phones, dammit!” and then the new mandate is the closest person answers the phone if it rings.
That lasted about a…day. What good does answering another division’s phone do? “Ya, we got a leak in the floating iffman pin. What should we do?” And you have no idea, so all you can say is “I’ll tell Dave you called.” Answering the phone made no difference.
And I’ve never looked back!
This for me, but only if my wife will arrive shortly and I know I’ll be handing the phone over.
We found a lost phone at Disneyland once, and answered it when it rang. We weren’t able to arrange a direct meet-up, so we told them exactly which lost-and-found station we’d leave it at.
Nope, and add me to the I barely answer my own phone crowd. I usually tell the person “Your phone made a noise.”
Matt Damon did a promo for one of the Bourne sequels where the prank was that someone would leave a random cell phone in a public place and call it. The person who answered would get Damon talking as Bourne and telling them to meet him somewhere giving turn-by-turn instructions as if they were being followed.
People were not receptive. They recorded a lot of people just staring at this random phone, one person ignored the instruction to come alone, etc. Damon was amazed they got any takers.
Nowadays most phones have voicemail, so if you aren’t answering the phone, the call isn’t lost, just postponed after being converted to a message.
I would certainly answer someone else’s phone if they asked me to, or possibly if I knew who was calling and knew there wouldn’t be a problem. But I’d rather have their voicemail store the message than me – I might forget to relay it.
This is the key difference. Back in the old days, after 10 rings, the caller would hang up. If you didn’t grab the phone in time, you had no way to know who the caller was. This was deeply irritating. (Remember, back then spam calls were rare, so usually you wanted to know who called.)
So, say, I was at a friend’s house. sitting in the living room, watching a football game.
The friend goes to the bathroom, so I’m alone for a minute or two in the living room. Suddenly the phone–which is mounted on the wall in the kitchen (remember? 
)-- rings.. There is no way the friend can answer.
The polite thing to do back in those days was to jump up from the couch and run to the kitchen, hoping to get there before the caller hangs up after the10th or 12th ring. You might answer with “hello” , but only if you are a really close friend. Otherwise, you would answer with “Smith residence”, to be more polite.
Same here. Very likely it’ll be her sister, in which case all concerned are happy to have the call answered. She has a certain friend I refuse to talk to, though (not because of hating her, which I don’t, but because she’s just too fucking difficult to deal with, and I got tired of trying). If that person calls, I’ll just mention to the wife later that X called and be done with it.
If you’re talking a cell phone, and most landline phones also, the caller can leave a voice message. It’s going to be much more useful for the owner of the phone to listen to the message than using me as an intermediary.
I was watching an episode of Code 3, an old time cop show. A bad guy was holding a banker and his family hostage, with plans on robbing the bank in the morning.
The landline phone rings and the bad guy asks “Who is it?” The banker asks, incredulously, “Well, how would I know that?”
I’d answer my wife’s if she asked me to, like if she was in the next room.
I’ll answer my husband’s , if he asks me to. But I try to avoid it - I’m trying (and failing) to teach him the phone is for his convenience and he doesn’t have to drop everything to answer it.
It would take a special circumstance. Maybe I’m visiting someone in the hospital and her phone rings, but she’s sound asleep or out of the room for some kind of test, or whatever. I would answer it because someone on the other end may very well be anxious and concerned, so I’d give them an update. Other than that, NO.