You don’t always have to answer the phone, or if it’s your cellphone, you can just turn it off. What usually bugs me is phonecalls that are not returned, or where the person who you left a message with hasn’t passed it on, or some miscommunication took place.

If the person who takes the message says, “They’ll phone you later,” then they really should.

The South African liason office in Taipei actually gets this right almost all the time. There have been times before when I’ve asked them for something and they said they’d get back to me, and they did. This might seem a bit extreme, but so often people don’t return calls. So it makes a good impression.