Is it rude to call people at home in the evening

Is it rude to call between 6 and 8pm?

  • Yes

    Votes: 17 28.3%

  • No

    Votes: 30 50.0%

  • Only for business

    Votes: 7 11.7%

  • I've never even heard of such a thing.

    Votes: 6 10.0%
  • Total voters
    60
cowman

cowman

Final Approach
PoA Supporter
Joined
Aug 12, 2012
Messages
5,472
Location
Danger Zone
Display Name
Display name:
Cowman
Ok maybe this is really old fashioned but it was something I was told as a kid and it always kinda stuck with me.

My father didn't like to call people in the evening like around 6-8pm, the idea being they'd be sitting down to dinner. He considered it to be rude. So we'd either make a call earlier like before 6 or wait until after 8.

I still remember this now and it makes me hesitate.... I know I'm annoyed when people call while we're eating dinner. However, in the age of cell phones and people not commonly doing the family dinner thing anymore is it still relevant? Was this just something my dad did and nobody else has heard of? I'm curious.
 
Nope not at all unless you know they work midshift and are sleeping. Or you're a telemarketer trying to tell someone they won a cruise.

If they are busy they don't have to answer. I all have is a cell phone. At midnight it auto mutes the ringer and picks back up again at 9am. Otherwise im fair game.
 
Doesn't bother me because I have a phone screener that tells me who it is but it is impolite.

Cheers
 
it depends.....if it's someone I know calling me in that time frame and I'm eating, I'll either answer and tell them I'll call back or I let it ring and call back later. I don't like to talk on the phone while eating. but if it's someone I don't know that's cold calling me, I'll tell em to Eff Off.
 
In my case I'm frequently needing to contact farmers who are hard to get ahold of during the day, have nothing resembling business hours, and don't do texting.
 
dang really you all think its impolite to call in the evening? I eat every 2 hours if you tried to call me at any point good chance im eating I would be ****ed...hahaha not. If im busy it will go to voice mail and ill call back. Nothing impolite. I don't know everyone's schedule answer or not im okay with it.
 
Who actually gets home early enough to eat between 6 and 8? Our meals are more on the 8-10 time frame.

And no it isn't rude to call. It's rude to pickup a call during dinner, but if they're eating they can always ignore the call and call me back later.
 
I hope you meant 6pm and 8am. That's my personal calling ban. Most don't need to hear from me in that time range!

I'm with @Brad Z on texting first if you want to talk to someone. I do that with a certain youtube sensation and most of my friends... 'Hey, you got some minutes?" and if they don't respond "yes" I don't call.

The exception to this is a guy I've known since second grade. That's about 45 years. We can interrupt each others lives at a moments notice without pause. Oh yeah, and my 5 brothers, they have a pass too. But the rest of the world needs to leave my evenings alone.

[and as I think about it, apologies again to a former.....]
 
I also grew up being told not to call during "dinner time", after 8-ish was OK, but after 9 was too late. That was a different generation, with a single telephone in the house. Eventually, folks got a second phone for the bedroom. Now, pretty much every human being has their personal communicator.

Anymore, with the rise of texts and voice mails, it's probably not that big a deal. If someone doesn't want to be bothered during dinner, they turn off the ringer and check later. I'd say it's OK to call, but expect to leave a message. Courtesy of avoiding a call during dinner might go a long way with some of the old-timers you may be dealing with, though.
 
Call people at home? Is that even a thing nowadays?

But nah, if it's before 9, than I'd say you're good to go. So go ahead and give that lady a call and ask her out.
 
Last edited:
If it's a cellphone, then a 6-8pm call is OK. The recipient can just swipe their smart watch. If it's a landline, then the recipient is either old or old-fashioned and therefore not OK. Besides, there's a good chance the recipient needs to get up to answer or silence the phone.
 
If someone's going to call me, 6-8 would probably be the ideal time.
 
Brad Z said:
Who cold calls anyone anymore? Nowadays I usually text someone first to see if they're available to chat.
Click to expand...

I was probably the last person in the US that got a phone that would text. Now I save lots of time by texting. Forget the voice mail, I never check it. If I do not answer then text, I will answer that eventually.

The part of Texas I grew up in, by the mid 80s virtually all farmers had a phone in the truck and possibly the tractor as well.

Still cracks me up to see a cowboy on horseback talking on the cell.....:rofl::rofl:
 
Call me anytime. If I don't want to answer I won't. Simple. But texts are less intrusive, anytime.
 
I haven't allowed a telephone with a ringer in my bedroom since 1990. Ignoring the rest of them "after hours" came later.

Oddly, I didn't have a TV in my bedroom until ~2005. I might need to rethink that. But I won't reconsider the phone.
 
Been on-call for two decades. Don't give a crap when anyone calls. If I'm not available you'll get voice mail. 99% of the time, I'll answer.

Now if you're a 'tard calling to tell me the printer is out of paper at 2AM and think that's an "emergency" I might have something to say to you about your inability to assess urgency which will include me asking you who is bleeding and why you didn't call 911 first.

If it's something of actual urgency, I'll tell you I'll start working on it and give you a time I will call you back with an update. If you call me for an update prior to that I will tell you that you're delaying you're own update because I'm talking to you again and not working on the problem.

If you insist on remaining on the phone you'll get to hear yourself put on speaker right next to my very loud keyboard.
 
Last edited:
Interesting, seems that people have varying views on the matter. Also varying working/lifestyle types and hours... makes a difference.

With my dad most business on the phone actually got conducted between 8 and 9pm. Only time of day the farmers were all actually in the house and not eating dinner!
 
Zeldman said:
Forget the voice mail, I never check it. If I do not answer then text, I will answer that eventually.
Click to expand...

What? You don't have voicemail-to-text transcription (aka "visual voicemail")?
 
If we're good friends, then no it's not rude. If you're just cold calling me, then be prepared to hang up on me as I'll screw with you something good. My favorites are the Indians and their MS technical support scam. So far I've had over 50 of them hang up and start yelling obscenities at me after I waste a couple hours of their time talking like Foghorn Leghorn, and them trying to figure out which one of my 5 Macs have a virus.:rofl:
 
We usually eat at 5:30 and if the land-line phone rings, it announces the caller id. If it's important (one of our kids or family), we pick up. If not, we let them leave a message. Texting ahead means that we'll be ready for your call, or can just quickly answer.

<rant>However, because of junk phone calls, our land-line has become essentially useless. We are using nomorobo, which is awesome, but it's ridiculous that we had to go to that. It used to be when the phone rang, it was something important and you rushed to it. No longer. We are paying for the privilege to receive continuous solicitations by scuzzballs, crooks, scam artists, and petty thieves of the earth. Except for the fact that it will screw up my phone/cable/internet package, I'd turn it off today and just use our cell phones. Of course, some of the evil, lying, verminous parasites are starting to ooze onto cellphones too.</rant>
 
cowman said:
Interesting, seems that people have varying views on the matter. Also varying working/lifestyle types and hours... makes a difference.

With my dad most business on the phone actually got conducted between 8 and 9pm. Only time of day the farmers were all actually in the house and not eating dinner!
Click to expand...
I also had an on call job and am used to being interrupted. It's nice now that I don't need to think about always being reachable. As far as dinner time goes, I haven't had a regular schedule for eating since I was a kid.
 
keen9 said:
What's a "landline"? ;)
Click to expand...
It's that thing that made people get up off the couch and run across the room. It was popular before this country starting struggling with obesity. Hm, correlation maybe? ;)

And circling back to the OP question, that's why you shouldn't make 6-8pm calls back in those days. The fact that you couldn't silence the ring and send the call to voicemail with a tap of your smartwatch is what made it rude.
 
When I was growing up, we usually didn't eat dinner until 8 PM or so. Mom liked to think she was French, and it's more common in France to have a later dinner. My grandmother would typically call us during dinner (she apparently never got the memo), so we would get interrupted to talk to her. She didn't call every night, probably once every week or two. Certainly there were some households that did consider it rude, but every household was different. The no calling after 9 PM was the big thing, and that was pretty consistent.

I think things are a lot different these days with cell phones and essentially universal caller ID, plus the ability to completely silence your phone with the flick of a switch. Things were a lot different 20 years ago. You could turn off ringers, but in reality you weren't going to go through the house and turn off all the ringers on your phones when you didn't want to be disturbed. Now I put my phone to "Do Not Disturb" every night before bed. You can call me at 3 AM, but I won't notice until I wake up.

I have no issues if my friends call me after 9 PM given this. That said, I am going to teach my kids that as a rule, they should not call anyone after 9 PM.
 
keen9 said:
What's a "landline"? ;)
Click to expand...

It was a device that instilled a certain amount of much needed delayed gratification into phone conversations. In other words, you had to wait until you got somewhere there was a phone to make a call. You couldn't do it while swerving across the road or annoy other people in a restaurant with your conversation.
 
I'm amazed at how many people still have land lines. We dumped ours well over ten years ago.
 
Is it rude to be rude to telemarketers or door-to-door sales lizards?
 
wsuffa said:
Is it rude to be rude to telemarketers or door-to-door sales lizards?
Click to expand...

Door to door... I feel a little bad for them as they are out there trying and I try to be as polite as possible with thank but no thanks... Telesales... click and I am done.
 
denverpilot said:
I'm amazed at how many people still have land lines. We dumped ours well over ten years ago.
Click to expand...
The cell service at my home is crappy. Just yesterday I had to ask someone to call me on the land line because we were fading in and out.
 
denverpilot said:
I'm amazed at how many people still have land lines. We dumped ours well over ten years ago.
Click to expand...

Same here. We moved from Indiana to California in early 2007 and decided to go cell only at that time. Haven't gone back to a landline since. We also have not had cable TV for 4 or 5 years. We use internet to stream and get some local channels with the rabbit ears.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top