About Rebecca Eckler
Since becoming pregnant with her daughter Rowan, Canadian journalist and author Rebecca Eckler has penned three hilarious books, including the best-selling Knocked Up. Catch Rebecca’s weekly unique perspective on motherhood and single parenthood.
Late Night Phone Calls
eckler plus one: phone etiquette canada
(Aug.16.11)
I was sitting outside in my backyard with my boyfriend, hours after I got my daughter to sleep. It was around 11:30pm and we were just shooting the shit.
Then my phone rang. My boyfriend looked at me as if to say, “Who could possibly be calling you at this time?” I looked at the phone display. I couldn’t believe it. It was a PR woman calling. I let it go to voicemail and then picked up the message. She was calling about a possible story for me to write at 11:30 on a Thursday night.
Now, granted, pre-mommy me would have picked up the phone and listened to her pitch. But I’ve been a mother now for almost eight years, and, seriously, I don’t pick up the phone at 7:30pm, because that’s the time I’m getting my daughter ready for bed. I don’t pick up the phone, generally past eight, because I’m exhausted. I ESPECIALLY don’t pick up if it is a work-related call.
Only a non-mother PR woman would, yes I’ll say it, have the NERVE, to call at such an hour. Not just because I’m a mother. But who the heck wants to work at 11:30pm on a Thursday night? There was only one thing I could do to get back at her.
Oh, yes, I did. I called her at 8:35am the following morning, the second after my daughter got on the bus to camp. She answered groggily while I responded as cheerfully as I could.
“Hello,” she grunted, sounding completely hung over.
“Hi!” I said, as if I had just run into a long lost friend. “How ARE you?”
Before she could even stutter out a sentence, which probably would have been, “Can I call you back when I wake up?” Or, “It’s only 8:30 in the morning!” I continued with my fake happy rant. “So I saw you called last night and I’m so sorry, but I’m a mother. You know that! I was fast asleep! But I’m up now and I’m ready to go, go GO! So what do you have for me? You clearly really wanted to get in touch with me and it’s been AGES since we’ve caught up. What’s going on in your life? Tell me EVERYTHING!”
She was dumbstruck, I could tell. So I let her off the hook. “Why don’t you call me back when you’re more awake. It sounds like I just woke you up.”
She admitted that, indeed, I had woken her up (Duh!) and she would call me back.
And she did. Exactly two hours later - a mere three hours after I had been up and working.
Then I really reamed into her, in a kind, joking way of course. “You called at 11:30pm. You know I have a daughter!” I laughed.
“I know, I know,” she said. “I just really wanted to tell you about this person,” she answered.
“But, still, it was 11:30pm! Even if I didn’t have a child, why are you making work calls at 11:30pm?”
“Oh I was out at this event and I ran into this person who I think you should write about so I wanted to get in touch with you immediately. Plus, I thought if you were sleeping, your cell phone would be downstairs anyway and it wouldn’t wake you,” she explained.
Actually, she had a point. Well, she had a few. It’s true that when I go to sleep I leave my cell phone downstairs – exactly because I DO NOT want to be woken up. It’s nice that she was thinking about me and wanted to get in touch with me. Still, as a parent, when was the last time YOU received a non-emergency call at 11:30pm? And how did you respond?
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