Answering others' phones, with unknown callers, is one of those responsibilities that low-ranking workers always prefer to pass on to someone else. Answering ph

Answering others' phones, with unknown callers, is one of those responsibilities that low-ranking workers always prefer to pass on to someone else. Answering phones sucks. The downside is that one might inadvertently offend an important person. ("[Y] speaking." "Hi, this is [X]." "Who are you?" "Your new boss, as of Monday, actually." "Oh.") There's no upside to answering, since responsibility for non-answering is diffused. So the phone is not answered. There's also conditioning at play. Remember the Grey Phone of Death, in high school? The one that usually carried calls to and from the principal's office, which you could get an in-school suspension for using without permission? Yeah, that phone.