Mr Angry provides some additional phone etiquette

I know I put forth my rules recently for mobile phone use but I have to put forward one more after the appalling episode I was subjected to today. I was in a fairly important meeting this afternoon that involved my boss, my boss's boss and an outside party so I was on my best behaviour. I had my phone set to vibrate so I'd know if I had a call to follow up without disrupting the meeting.

Sure enough, nobody had called me all day but halfway through the meeting my phone started to vibrate. No worries I thought. A little bit later I felt the secondary vibration which meant the caller had left a voice mail. All well and good. Then ten minutes later the phone vibrated again. I snuck a look at the display but there was no caller ID. I let it go.

Ten minutes later it vibrated again. I checked and still no caller ID. I was starting to get a little nervous. What was so important that somebody had to keep ringing after leaving a voicemail? Over the next hour (the fucking meeting was really dragging on) six calls came in. By the end of the meeting I almost ran out the door so I could check the voicemail. I had to wait a while longer while we did the polite goodbyes but finally I got to check the message.

Except there was no message. There was a few seconds of silence before the caller hung up. By this time it had been about 20 minutes since the last call. I thought if I started making calls to try and find out who it was, Murphy's Law would kick in and the person would call back and I'd miss the call. I waited ten more minutes then started calling. I started working my way through the most likely numbers, mostly family, but nobody called me.

I called a friend I had been talking to earlier in the day to see if he had called back. When I asked if he had been calling he said no. I explained all the calls and how I was trying to track down who it was. Then he said:

"Actually it was me, I was joking when I said it wasn't."

Me: "What?"

Idiot So-Called Friend: "Yeah, it was me calling."

Me: "Six times in an hour?"

IS-CF: "Yeah."

Me: "Why?"

IS-CF: "I wanted to tell you about how my date went last night."

At this point I decided to take a few deep breaths. He was a friend, after all. So I chose my words carefully:

"What the fuck were you thinking calling that many times? I though someone was dead! That's the only reason anyone with a brain would be so insistent with calls. Just leave a fucking message next time. I swear to god, I'm coming around to your place to beat you to death with your fucking phone!"

So that's my etiquette lesson for today. When you reach someone's voice mail or answering machine, LEAVE A FUCKING MESSAGE!