So a new little issue has come to light that I would like clarification on. It has to do with the inevitable reality of dropped calls when owning and operating a mobile telephone. On average my cell phone drops one or two calls per day. Your mileage may vary of course depending on your overall call volume, and how much you move around while talking. I don’t know if my own experience is average (it seems rather high considering I live, work, and play within a 5 mile radius) but lets pretend that everyone has at least one dropped call per day.

To be quite honest the fact that the calls get dropped doesn’t annoy me too much. I completely understand the technical and atmospheric challenges my little Motorola faces each time I place a call. In addition to that, my handset is abused quite a bit. It’s really a wonder that it doesn’t just fall apart in my hands. But all that aside the real problem is this:

After a dropped call, who has the responsibility to place the return call.

Since there is no generally understood policy on this I am often caught in a frustrating cycle of calling the other party at the exact moment they are calling me back. We both end up in the “sorry I’m already on the phone” voicemail box only to quickly hang up and redial hoping the other party isn’t doing the same. If both callers are savvy with the keypad this process can repeat itself two or three times before one caller finally gives up and allows the other to ring through. This actually causes a whole new problem…

Once the ‘busy’ cycle has played itself out, all to often BOTH parties have the bright idea of just leaving the phone alone till it rings. Seconds tick passed with no ring. Each party thinks they are being the ‘fresh thinker’ and second guesses the situation. “They must be waiting for me to call them now” I tell myself each time. I would say that at least half of the time I do that, the other party has done the same thing. We shuttle ourselves back into the damned ‘busy’ cycle for at least one round.

At this point the process seems totally futile. Especially since the purpose of the phone call was to say “Hello” and “how is your day going”. If the situation plays out just like I have described above, both parties give up completely and the phone call never actually happens. It’s not really a big deal. They will end up talking at some point… but there’s got to be a better way.

So if your reading this… tell me what you think. Who gets to pick up the pieces after a dropped call?