Do you feel the need to answer your phone when it rings (tones, or whatever)?

Ken Anderson

Ken Anderson

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Do you feel like you're required to answer the phone when someone calls? Unless the number is listed in my contacts or in the unlikely event that I recognize the number, I almost never do, and I haven't replayed messages (voicemail) since I got this phone years ago. Texting is the more reliable way for anyone to contact me; otherwise, call my wife's number, which is only one digit from mine.
 
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I have my phone set to only ring if the caller is in my list of contacts. Otherwise, and calls are sent to voice mail, and if it is an important call, the person will usually leave me a voicemail. Any calls also show up on my Apple Watch, so I can see who is calling from that alert and also answer with the watch if necessary.

There is a spam filter on my iPhone, so when it thinks I have a spam call (which is actually seldom) then it can also tell me that on the caller description.
We only have cell phones, and no land line phone, so most of the spam I get is in email, not phone calls.
 
Need and want are normally two very distinct mental dealings but in the case of answering the phone, if I do not want to talk to someone then I generally feel no need to either.

Pavlov’s dogs were trained to eat after the sounding of a bell. Normal wanting to eat was turned into a need.
 
I have a second hand phone on landline. The mailbox is full cause I don't know the code to retrieve messages, so callers must leave a voice message. 99.9 percent of calls are where numbers are screened as unavailable, meaning not listed publicly. I've kept it this long because the voice is very clear and the messages are too. I don't answer the phone unless I know who it is or expecting a call.
 
We, too, have a landline. It is used for the farm business and for my wife's charity and unknown parishioner calls (It is on the church answering machine). My cell is for friends and family only, but wife gives hers out much more freely. The only real spam calls I get are from politicians or pollsters, which are not answered. We have caller ID on the landline and the phone calls out who the call is from. I don't answer any calls when I don't know the caller, and if there is no message left we don't respond to it. We do check messages though.
 
My phone does a good job of screening spam. As others have said, if the number is not in my contacts list, I dump it to voice mail. I think Apple (or maybe it's Verizon) has a feature where you can direct a call to a process where the caller briefly states the reason for calling so then you can decide whether or not to pick it up. I do not have it turned on.

I like my Apple Watch because it displays the Caller Info and I can either answer or dump it to Voice Mail without having to rush to my phone.
 
Last Sunday, we changed our Henderson, NV phone numbers to Loveland, CO numbers. So, hopefully, we won't get any more calls from Henderson or Las Vegas. However, if either of our iPhones shows "Potential Span", we just send the call to Voicemail. We don't generally answer if we don't recognize the phone number.
 
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