Caller ID confusion has ring of familiarity
By Beth Teitell
Tuesday, August 30, 2005

I don't know how to answer my phone anymore. I have Caller ID, so obviously I can see who's on the other end, which renders an inquisitive ``hello?'' pretty moot. But if I greet the caller by name it sort of creeps people out, I've noticed.

Not my good friends, but that other vast category of callers: a mother eager to set up a play date, a neighbor with a parking question, a business acquaintance. People I'd recognize on the street - and certainly be expected to greet by name. But the phone plays by its own rules, I guess.

In fact, even if I don't use the caller's name, but say ``hi,'' in an I-know-who-you-are way, it unsettles people, even those who themselves have Caller ID. It implies a kind of sixth-sense thing going on, as in ``I see dialing people.''

I've been feeling uncomfortable with this for some time. I don't enjoy feeling like a Peeping - Listening? - Tom, so I've started pretending I don't know who's calling. ``Hello?'' I answer all, feigning an innocent curiosity about who might be on the other end.

I assumed this would resolve the situation, but instead it sometimes brings on a new, almost more embarrassing problem, in which I'm pretending I don't know who's calling when the caller assumes I do and starts right in on her business. My duplicity forces the other person to say ``it's so-and-so'' and me to reply ``Oh, right, sorry, how are you?'' Meryl Streep should act this well.

I should probably ask a shrink about my Caller ID shame issues, but instead I called two etiquette experts, both of whom said hello and that greeting someone by name is indeed a bit forward or presumptive. In fact, it threatens to ``steal the caller's thunder.'' Except when you know for sure it's a really good friend on the other end, they advised going with ``hello.''

And yet, letting the caller identify herself when you know full well who's calling feels bizarre. I called a friend to get her opinion, and as if on cue she pretended she didn't know it was me. ``Why are you playing dumb?'' I asked.

She examined her motives, and they turned out to reflect the very nub of the situation: to admit that you have Caller ID is to raise the grim possibility that some day, maybe some day soon, this very caller, who you deigned to talk to today, might be sent straight to the answering machine.

So the way I look at it, there's no winning. Or, as Renee Zellweger put it, ``You had me at hello.''