One thing that I miss with mobile phones is the ability to have the handset at my ear, close the connection by pressing on the phone’s cradle, only then to put the handset off my ear. The reason why I like that ability is that sometimes, after we have made our goodbyes, I think of one last thing I want to ask the other party, only to talk into the air as the other party has already put the mobile phone away from their ear, to press the hangup button. I don’t want to subject the other party to that annoyance.
Also, with fixed line phones and another person standing next to me, sometimes the person standing next to me began disparaging the person on the other end of the line, after the verbal signoff but before the receiver hit the cradle. That was another reason why I adopted the habit of closing the line before replacing the receiver.
So, what is/was your habit with handset/cradle phones?
I generally depressed the cradle first, as it seemed more gentle – less likely to create an unpleasant noise for the other person. I’d only hang the handset first if I was deliberately hanging up in the person’s face in an abusive way.
I tend to hang up by putting the handset back on the hook, though never with force. I will press the switch myself if I need to immediately make another call, however.
I seriously had to think back aways to recall the last time I used a phone with a cradle. I think I was like 6 years ago. I think I usually just hung up.
One of the coolest things I miss about desktop handset phones was the ability to smack the wired end of the handset, and it’d pop up out of the cradle and into your hand.
Now if you excuse me, I’m going to go out and sit on my front porch swing…
I usually hung up the handset (well, still do, on the two remaining phones in my house which are built this way, both of them over 20 years old). The only time I’d press on the cradle / button with my hand would be if I was going to immediately make another call.
Ha! We have two old-fashioned looking modern phones in our house, with cradles. This Eiffel Tower model and another one I can’t find a photo of. The originals are before my time but I love them anyway.
To answer the poll, it just always seemed more polite to gently push down the cradle. It was easy to sound like you’re slamming down the phone if you didn’t do it carefully, especially with the wall-mounted kind.
Having grown up in the golden age of the cradle phone, I never once felt as if someone had slammed down the receiver when they hung up in a normal fashion…it just didn’t make that much noise. I almost always hung up by placing the receiver back on the cradle, unless, as others said, I was going to immediately call someone else.
I must say I’m a tad amused by imagining the poor OP, having to live with people who would regularly shout out disparaging comments about the person you were talking to, enough times at least to make you want to find a work-around. And being ever hopeful that someone would think of just one more thing to say…you are a considerate and sensitive person, it would seem.
I got in the habit of pressing the cradle with my hand first from using phones as PA systems. If you made an announcement, then just hung up, it would make this horrible chchchcrackchunk sound unless you just depressed the button by hand first. So I just got into the habit because of that, it’s easier just to do it all the time rather than try to remember just during announcements.
Does this mean you’d prefer a separate cradle in order to still have that ability? Because it seems that the occasional instance where you think of one more thing to say and “annoy” the other party by talking to air is far outweighed by convenience of phone design. Would you switch to a cradled (or hell, even just a button on a wire) phone if you had the chance? I’m guessing you’d be in the minority.
Yes, with mobile phones I’d like the ability to terminate the connection with my ear still at the loudspeaker (of course I could do that by wearing a headset, but that’s too much of a hassle to carry around, put on and off for the few calls I make in a day).