Wrong numbers: the modern guide to phone etiquette

I am old enough to remember when telephoning was something that happened by the front door, at a desk or in a phone box. The greatest irritation it would ever cause would be either the phone ringing at an inconvenient hour, occasional earpiece spillover (in the manner of ‘The Colonel’ berating Dick Dastardly), or bearing witness to someone on a call making the occasional Sybil Fawlty-style response of “Oh, I know!”. All that, however, changed with the mobile. Life changed with the mobile. 

In 1988 I was working for Sky TV at its former HQ in London’s West End. One lunchtime my newly appointed boss (I went through several during my five years at the company…) went out for a haircut at a barber’s just a few doors down the road. Shortly after he left the phone on my desk phone rang: “Poulter!” he barked (Frenchifying my name to rhyme with ‘Voltaire’). “I’m out of cigarettes.” Resisting the temptation to ask what I could do about it, given that the barber was next door to a newsagent, I replied: “Where are you calling from?”. Him: “The barber’s. I’m using my new mobile phone.” It was one of those Motorola housebricks that was proliferating amongst Gordon Gekko types in the City, yelling “Sell, sell, SELL!” or “Buy, buy, BUY!” into them before the battery gave out (usually after a matter of minutes).

His call was probably the first time I’d received one from someone using a mobile, let alone from a two-minute walk away, and certainly for anything as clearly performative as simply to say they’d run out of fags. I tell this story purely to highlight the fact that, while the act of calling from a mobile was no less unexpected than if he had called me from a landline (and frequently did with much the same request), the ability to make calls from anywhere to anyone heralded an irreversible shift of etiquette.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the very first mobile phone call being made, although it would be the early 90s before mass adoption of handsets would take off. Today there are more mobile phones in use than there are people. An entire generation has grown up only knowing the smartphone, which now accounts for almost 90% of phones in use. However, with that generation, and the ubiquity of those devices, their use has also become a source of annoyance for many on a scale of irate never imaginable when I took that call from my boss in the barber’s chair 35 years ago.

Now, before I go further, I should declare a vested interest: I’m not against the mobile phone, not only being wedded to mine from wake-up alarm to last thing at night, but also having worked for the last 13 years in the telecommunications industry, both for companies who make mobile networks, and companies that provide services over them. I came into the industry from consumer electronics only three years after Apple had introduced its first iPhone, customarily taking something from someone else and making it better. This was still the 3G era, when being able to look up a web page on a handset was a rudimentary and sluggish experience. Then came 4G, bringing us something approaching mobile broadband (and with it video and audio streaming), before more recently 5G doing much the same thing, only theoretically faster. But the thing is, as these revolutions in information and social connectivity have taken place, the phone call - surely the primary reason for owning a phone in the first place, has started taking a back seat.

Picture: Apple

This has prompted Debrett’s, the authority on all that’s good and proper, to highlight the clear generational divide between those under 40 and those over, and their attitudes to phone use. The younger you are, it suggests, the less likely you are to use a phone for conversing with people. If they do, it says, there is greater likelihood of decades of ‘telephone manner’, as it used to be called, being trashed.

Easily the primary peeve of any respectful individual who travels on public transport is the phone call (or FaceTime) conducted loudly without headphones, or even with headphones where the wearer has no idea just how annoyingly loud they are (ditto: conference call headsets in an office, but that’s another blog post entirely). Nothing seems to draw more ‘tssking’ and pass-agg glances in the direction of the callee than on a train, although the advent of in-flight WiFi and presents a new horror, as business types on planes, unable to switch off for a few hours, try to connect for Zoom while zooming in and out of satellite coverage at 38,000 feet. It’s all so redolent of Bob Mortimer’s brilliant Train Guy persona: “Ya, ya! Have a campachoochoo on me, ya! You are, as always, a vigorous pigeon. And of course, ciao and bella pommefritio”. 

“If you’re making a video call in a public space (or if you’re just too lazy to hold the phone up to your ear) you must use headphones or earbuds,” Debrett’s instructs. “Nobody should be forced to listen to your phone conversation; it will be annoyingly distracting and might be intrusive or embarrassing. The person at the other end might object if they realise their conversation is audible to a train carriage full of unwilling eavesdroppers.” Hal-le-lu-jah.

Almost as annoying are those you know are using a speakerphone to multi-task, making the occasional “Yeah” or “OK” while they clack away at their keyboards. This, Debrett’s notes, is a recent phenomenon. “We carry our phones everywhere and think nothing of making calls when we’re on crowded transport, walking down noisy streets, doing the washing up, cooking the children’s tea,” it says. “Not only are these calls often annoyingly inaudible, it is also perfectly obvious that you are making them while doing something else. This can be very alienating for the recipient, who feels marginalised and deprioritised.”

Many of these traits have been adopted by younger mobile phone users, rather than older generations brought up to answer the phone, while standing to attention: “Whitehall 1212, how may I help you”. Indeed, such is the generational divide of these personal communication faux pas, that Debrett’s has now published its “ten commandments of mobile etiquette”. 

First up is a rule which negates the notion that young people want to be called in the first place. An unexpected call, it says, is to be ignored (or feared) and sent to voicemail. According to Debrett’s Gen-Z is more likely to send texts, WhatsApp messages, voice notes and even e-mail rather than make calls, or even leave voicemail. “In general, people seem to be much happier using less direct methods. But we are still faced with a social conundrum: if everyone carries the means of communication in their pocket, why are they so elusive and unreachable?”. To this it points out that, in the pre-mobile era, to not answer the phone when it rang was to be “deeply eccentric”.

Thus, Debrett’s commands that before making a call a text should first be sent to enquire if the recipient is available to speak, surely the telephonic equivalent of the early days of the automobile when a lackey walked in front of one waving a red flag to broadcast its onset. “This preamble might seem cumbersome to traditional phone addicts who love nothing more than spontaneously picking up the phone,” says Debrett’s, “but it is considered a much less stressful way of initiating contact since it minimises intrusion and enables people to manage their own time.”

In further contravention of what made Alexander Graham Bell’s leg it down to the patent office, calls made out social intent aren’t meant to be answered. It is perfectly acceptable, Debrett’s says, for a call to be registered as “missed” and returned at a more convenient moment. Knowing how long it takes younger members of my family to even read, let alone reply to a WhatsApp, this piece of etiquette reduces telephony to the speed and efficiency of postal communications (and I’m talking here about horse-borne couriers in Elizabethan times). Beware, though, as repeated calls - leading to a string of “missed call” alerts - will only raise the recipient’s blood pressure. “Unless there is a real emergency - in which case it would be sensible to send a text - it is an unjustified intrusion, likely to alienate the recipient.” Should a voicemail be left (and if so, it’s “a matter of taste” for doing so), they should be kept brief.

Business calls, on the other hand, are “a different matter and are likely to be answered with much more willingness and alacrity”, while voicemail is “a matter of taste” but messages should be kept brief, if left at all. Debrett’s is not suggesting that phone calls shouldn’t be made, but it says that a call out of the blue can trigger an alarm: “People are more likely to react to them with panic or dread. If, for example, you see a call flashing up on your phone from your child’s school you instantly leap to the conclusion that there has been an accident”. Authority figures, such as doctors, should begin any phone call by reassuring the recipient that they are not about to die, although it also advises that while text messages are an acceptable way to congratulate someone, they should not be used to offer condolences. “There are some instances where the human voice must take priority,” Debrett’s says sagely. “Texts are an economical way of communicating but they are not good when it comes to nuance.”

Debrett’s Ten Commandments Of Phone Etiquette

1. Text before calling
2. If no answer, send a text
3. Don't repeatedly call unless an an emergency
4. Don't leave a voicemail
5. Be aware people may find unsolicited calls alarming
6. If someone says it's a bad time to talk, call back later
7. Be tolerant of older people's habits
8. Don't take calls in public spaces,
9. If you do, use headphones
10. If it's important or sending condolences, call

The New Rules of Mobile Eitquette (debretts.com)

No more messy nights - the Amsterdam party is over

© Simon Poulter

When I moved to Amsterdam, 24 years ago, there were innumerable comments along the lines of: “Oh yeah... Amsterdam, eh?! EH?!! Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, EH?!!”. 

To the uninformed I was relocating to a cesspit of iniquity, a European Gomorrah of rampant drug taking and prostitutes for sale in the windows of every street. Everything, people supposed, a single man in his early thirties could desire. Except it wasn’t. Because Amsterdam wasn’t - and isn’t - like that at all. 

Yes, the notorious red light zone de Wallen (“the walls”) exists, with its women – most probably sex-trafficked - sat in illuminated windows looking bored while awkward men leer at them from the outside. And, as you walk through quaint backstreets, the barely disguised whiff of weed tickles the nostrils as it pours out of semi-legal coffee shops. However, this is just a tiny slice of Amsterdam, one of the jewels of Europe, with its Instagramable canals, medieval architecture, vibrant culture and a history and charm matched only by the likes of Paris, Seville or Prague.

I am naturally biased, having once lived in or near Amsterdam for the better part of a decade, as well as being a frequent visitor for almost 30 years. To some extent, too, the seedier side isn’t as bad as it could be (ditto, Hamburg and its somewhat cartoon-like Reeperbahn), but I get where the city authorities, and indeed the Dutch government, are coming from in wanting to clean it up. 

Conscious of this reputation, tourists are even being discouraged from visiting the de facto Dutch capital, though this was initially a measure to cut down on overcrowding. An environmental measure was also introduced to cap flights arriving at Schiphol, Amsterdam’s massive, seven-runway international air hub, which this year alone has reduced the number of flights from the UK by 22% compared with pre-Covid travel. The Netherlands Tourism Board has even been actively promoting places alternatives like Eindhoven - a city I know well from my career at Philips, which was founded there. 

But with the exception of football nerds wishing to see the PSV Stadion, or the even more niche interest of the Philips lightbulb museum, Eindhoven is largely a ‘company town’ with little to offer tourists compared to the cultural riches of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum, the Anne Frank House, the canals or the Negen Straatjes (‘nine streets’), not to mention its wealth of cross-culture cuisines.

Amsterdam has always been one of the most welcoming cities in Europe, in one of the world’s happiest nations, according to research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. But those same people are understandably tired of the stag-weekenders who spend their time in the city getting drunk, fighting outside bars and urinating in canals (before then falling in), or swaggering about the red light zone leering at its most unfortunate residents. 

This has now been reflected by an online campaign specifically targeting 18-35-year-old British men, with one ad showing a young man being arrested and put in a cell with the atypically Dutch-blunt caption: “So coming to Amsterdam for a messy night? Stay away.”

In recent years the city has made efforts to combat the vice industry (believed to be controlled by a combination of rival Turkish and Albanian organised crime), both to cut down on the sex tourism as well as the exploitation of vulnerable women. The drugs trade, run by the same gangs, has long been associated with this, with politicians arguing that the liberal experiment, dating back to the 1970s, which legitimised cannabis use as long as it is sold in limited quantities in coffee shops, has failed. Weed sales have been regarded as a gateway to sales of harder narcotics, all with associated criminality invariably leading to violence.

When I moved to Amsterdam in 1999 moves were already in place to tackle drug tourism, prompting a national ban on the sale of magic mushrooms and an increased regulation of cannabis sales, and aimed at striking a balance between tourism and public safety. Simultaneously, concerns about sex tourism and human trafficking prompted initiatives to regulate prostitution and improve the working conditions of sex workers. There were also measures to reduce the visibility of the red light district, with an effort to redevelop Amsterdam’s central neighbourhoods by encouraging new businesses to move into streets previously dominated by the sex and drug industry.

Sustainable tourism has also been promoted, with a campaign calling for tourists to “Enjoy & Respect” Amsterdam, and embrace its rich cultural artistic heritage rather than its seedier attractions. However, in also addressing both ‘over-tourism’ and sex/drug visitors, businesses relying on tourist euros have expressed their concerns at any effort to drive down undesirabled, especially in the wake of Amsterdam’s post-pandemic recovery.

It is, then, a dilemma. Amsterdam – like everywhere else – suffered greatly from Covid travel bans and lockdowns, as the city’s hotels, bars, restaurants and shops saw business plummet. The campaign against young male Brits is targeted, but it is hard yet to gauge whether it will be either effective in achieving its aims, or detrimental to the local economy.

© Simon Poulter

As a champion of Amsterdam, however, anything which can successfully eradicate city’s “nudge-nudge, wink-wink” association, and works to enhance and embrace its unique identity is a good thing.

The city is more than simply a living museum, but its heritage - dating back to the 13th century when a small fishing village was established along the Amstel River - is more than worthy of protection. This is the city that was at the heart of the Dutch Golden Age in the 18th century, becoming a trading hub, with the construction of its famous ring of canals earning it the “Venice of the North” nickname. Its commercial and artistic foundations are still to be celebrated, either in the traditions established by the Dutch East India Company, one of the world’s earliest multinationals (and the genetic origin of the Netherlands’ global business outlook), the foundation of one of the world’s first stock exchanges – the “Beurs” (although Belgium’s Bruges lays claim to the oldest, its bourse), not to mention the work of Rembrandt and Vermeer during that same era.

There are those who see the see the discouragement of tourists looking to have the wrong kind of good time as being to Amsterdam’s financial detriment, not to mention to the detriment of its charm. But, just as New York – established as New Amsterdam – cleaned itself up in the early 1990s to its immeasurable benefit as a tourist destination, Amsterdam’s crackdown on Brits seeking to exploit its underbelly will go a long way to lessen the profile of that reputation. It will surely only enhance what those like me who know it, know it to be the real Amsterdam.