I don’t get many phone calls. I can go for days without the phone ringing. So WTF tonight?
0030: I’m sound asleep. Phone rings. I don’t answer. The machine picks up. I hear ‘Oh, shit.’
0100: I’m sound asleep. Phone rings. I don’t answer. No message.
0202: I’m sound asleep. Phone rings one and a half times.
0420: I’m sound asleep. Phone rings. That’s the limit. I pick up, but press the wrong button in the dark. I called back. ‘Hello?’ says the man. ‘Who is this?’ I ask. ‘Who is this?’ asks the man. ‘I’m the guy you just called from this number.’ ‘Oh. Sorry.’
No chance of going back to sleep after the last one. I get up.
Four calls in the middle of the night, when I rarely get any calls at any time. Three numbers on Caller ID: the wireless guy; ‘Leyva Angelino’, who calls from time to time, doesn’t speak English, and still hasn’t gotten the clue that I’m not the person s/he’s looking for; one Out Of Area.
I was dreaming each time the phone rang, so I was well asleep. Seemed to be an active night for dreaming. Don’t these people have anything better to do?
I feel lke I get more calls at inconvenient times than any other time. Like, when I’m in the library for example (luckily, my phone was on silent). Or, when I leave my phone at home. Come on now, people- you never call me when I’m not doing anything important and am near my phone. But the minute I can’t talk, everyone starts to call.
There is something wrong with the phone line in my neighborhood. Whenever it rains the line gets real noisey and incoming callers hear a ringing sound but my phone doesn’t actually ring. The first few times this happened I dutifully called in a trouble report to the phone company. They came out but the problem persists. I don’t bother calling anymore and we look forward to the rainy days.
I don’t use my cellphone while I’m driving - I either pull over or wait till I’m at a red light. So when do I get the ONLY calls I even GET on my cellphone? When I’m driving. Call it Missy’s law - your cellphone will only ring when you are doing something making it impossible to use it.
I know it seems to be a common thought process… not answering the phone in the middle of the night… but I totally don’t understand it. Seems to me that if someone is calling me at 2am, it’s probably an emergency. If there is one time I am NOT going to ignore the phone, it’s when it’s most likely to be an urgent call, you know? Phone rings at 7pm, I will answer it or not depending on if I feel like talking. Middle of the night? I’ll answer every time.
That is what the answering machine is for=to answer the phone and give you the message when you wake up. We had an answerring service for my dad the doctor call the house one weekend every four hours. I finally told the woman that they will be loosing his contract for inepitude. If the doctor does not have an emergancy contact number it means that unless the office building is burning down it will keep until Monday morning.
Got any preteen-teenage kids? We finally had to lay down the law with my 20yo stepdaughter because her friends would call constantly (Average 2-3 calls per hr) starting at 9pm or so. Of course if my wife or I picked up the phone, they hung up, any time SD picked it up it was for her.
Alas, my husband has folks who work 24/7 shifts who call him at all hours when they have a problem at the hospital where he works. They’re supposed to call his cell phone, but half the time they forget and call the house line. And then I answer it and try very hard not to get pissed off. It might make more sense to put the phone on his side of the bed, but by having me answer it, it creates enough guilt that they don’t call unnecessarily.
I always assume middle-of-the-night calls are emergencies, too, but unfortunately it usually seems to be drunks.
How 'bout the folks who call, get your answering machine and decide to call again in case you’ll realize that it’s “really important” and pick up this time? Some of Hubby’s co-workers do this, and will often call back four or five times in a row. It’s just so damn imperious. They’ll do this with the door, too-- ring the doorbell three or four times, and then hammer on the door loud and long as if the only* possible* reason I could have for not answering their summons was that I didn’t hear it. (Unlikely, will all three dogs barking in accompanyment.)
I get those sometimes. I think it is an automatic dialer that is trying to see if anyone’s home. The jerks who program them often set up their system to make lots of outgoing calls, so that their telemarketers are never idle. They drop the call if someone answers and there is no-one available to take the call.
Lately, it’s been mostly “Did you know that Senator Foghorn is a practicing philanthropist, and that he’s in favor of torturing puppies and kittens?”.
The phone rang at 5:00 one morning and, thinking it was an emergency, I answered it. Turned out to be a business whose employee or automatic dialing system forgot about the three hour time difference between the east and the west coasts. None-too-pleased, I pointed this out to the caller. He quickly hung up without another word. :rolleyes:
I’ve been the recipient of Dreaded Calls. My parents are now dead, but middle-of-the-night phone calls = instant stress because I still have a sister. If it’s an emergency, they’ll say ‘Pick up the phone!’
My Southern abode is an efficiency apartment. No way to ignore the phone. I do have some friends here, and I’m sure they’d yell at the machine for me to pick up. I used to have a friend who’d get drunk and call me at two or three in the morning. I told him to stop it, and he’d still call and call me a Nazi. I have no patience for drunks calling or wrong numbers.
I did this once. I came to work on a Monday morning and found a message from very late Friday night. The caller gave me the name of their company and their phone number and asked me to call back. I didn’t recognize the name of the company but my boss told me we occasionally did business with them. He never told me that it was a home based business or that the customer was in Hawaii. So I called them at 8am EST. Needless to say, there was a very quick apology and I waited until my shift was almost over (9 hours later) before calling back.
About once a year, I will get a call around 2am. The call is from the local Wendy’s. Apparently, the closer has to call in a bunch of numbers every night. Somehow, they get my number. I used to call the number on the caller ID to let them know but it still happens. Now, I just delete the message. If the twits can’t dial the correct number, they shouldn’t be responsible for closing the store.
Wouldn’t matter anyway. Political phone calls are exempted from the “Do Not Call” lists, and part that requires companies to remove you if you ask.
I suggest you just consider it part of the price of living in an elected democracy. Nobody in, say, North Korea, is bothered by ‘vote for bob’ phone calls.
There was only one time a dark-of-the-morning call was an emergency, and it happened that I was already awake - my alarm would have gone off less than an hour later anyway. For the most part, they’ve been wrong numbers, dialed by someone mumbling incomprehensibly on the other end. Heck, even when my dad died, my mom waited till morning to call - it’s not like anyone could have done anything in the middle of the night.
Twenty-some years ago, shortly after we found out that my grandfather had cancer, I got the middle-of-the-night call. I thought for sure it was bad news. Nope. It was the duty petty officer (I was still in the Navy at the time) who was directed to call an All Officers Meeting at 2AM by the drunken executive officer. I made my displeasure known. That was the beginning of the end of my Naval career. And that’s why the ringer on my bedside phone is turned off.
I guess I’m fortunate. In my case I can not conceive of any possible emergency (including deaths or grave illnesses in the family) that would be mitigated by me answering the phone in the middle of the night as opposed to getting a message first thing in the morning. I realize that is not the case for others, but it does let me leave the ringer on my bedroom phone off so it can’t wake me (if I’m wide awake and in my bedroom I can still hear my living room phone).