Except in a few specific situations, I treat my cel phone the same way I’d treat a land line with an answering machine or voice mail. If there are guests in the house and the land line rings, I don’t answer it UNLESS I am waiting for a SPECIFIC call. If I am, I check caller ID. If the caller is anyone other than the specific person I was waiting for, I don’t answer the phone. And I certainly never ever pick up the phone and call someone unless it’s for the benefit of the group, like ordering pizza or inviting a new person over because everyone else wants to see them.
I should turn off the ringer more often when I’m out with others, but I’m always afraid that I’ll forget to turn the ringer back on. Sometimes people with me get anxious when my phone starts ringing and I refuse to even look at it. Usually, I’ll just turn the ringer off when that happens.
I don’t know why everyone thinks that you HAVE to answer your cel phone when it rings. We lived for several decades not being available to take calls 100% of the time. There’s no reason we should be forced to be available at all times even with the phone turned on and in our pocket.
I wish more people thought this way. I hate being in a group and someone answers the phone. Everyone else feels an obligation to stop talking to the person on the phone can hear the call. If they go the extra rude mile and refuse to cut the call short, there can be a very long and uncomfortable silence in the group, because they are trying to be polite to the phone user even though the user is making no effort to be polite themselves.
I also try to never use the phone when there are strangers mingling around. I’ll text, but I won’t talk. But I feel really uncomfortable when someone is talking about private personal stuff so loudly that I end up eavesdropping when I don’t want to know anything about this stranger.
And it’s horrible when people talk on the phone in the elevator. Everyone is standing around, trying to avoid disturbing each other in every way—even simple eye contact is avoided. And here’s this person jabbering away in a loud voice at the expense of everyone else’s comfort. If you must talk on the phone in public, at least be courteous and not be so loud and intrusive to others.