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Comment by chadaustin | Hacker News Reader

I followed that rule religiously until my father's boss called saying he'd collapsed on a business trip and nobody would answer their phones. Now I just put up with the junk calls. :/

(He ended up surviving ventricular fibrillation with no organ or brain damage because they got an AED on him within a minute.)

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That sounds awful, but wouldn't he have left a voicemail?

No, she was just trying to get ahold of anyone, so she continued calling numbers down the list. She being my father's boss.

Perhaps she should have called using your father's phone.

I have dealt with a family member getting picked up by EMTs multiple times and every time they used my family member's phone to call me despite my family member being mostly unconscious. It worked - I pick up instantly every time.

The solution in that scenario is to text message if possible. People will read texts from unknown numbers.

When asked for an emergency contact, I always supply "[wife's name] [wife's #] (please text)", knowing there's basically no chance of her picking up a call from an unknown number.

Isn't the solution to that to call the emergency number?

But once you've called the emergency number, and are in an Ambo on your way to hospital, or are in the hospital, you want to let people know that you're not dead in a ditch.

Some hospitals are stricter about cell phones than others.

Honestly. Or leave a goddamned voicemail. Nobody leaves voicemails, so if you leave one, I'll listen.

A good solution is a voicemail-to-text message transcription service like the one Verizon offers. You get the best of both worlds - not answering your phone, and knowing who called and why.

That would be a good solution if anyone used voicemail. Why bother when you can text?

Because it catches all the callers who don't text - ex: banks, robocalls, people leaving frantic emergency messages, etc.

Anecdotal, but I now get complete "text message coverage" for all incoming calls.

Agreed. And if the caller can't be bothered to leave a voicemail, I can't be bothered to care about why they called me.

Once someone has sought medical help (I'm assuming doctors and hospitals don't screen their calls) then contacting family members isn't such a life or death priority. Obviously you'll want to find out as soon as possible, but the list of loved ones is usually reasonably long and i personally don't go through life terrified that every last ringing phone is bringing me terrible news. Sometimes my phone is out of battery or i have no coverage for days on end when I'm on holiday. I don't let it ruin my life.

He didn't leave a voice mail message? He didn't call 911? He staked his survival on the chance of reaching the son/daughter of one of his employees? Really?

I read the parent as saying that the boss's father called, post-emergency, to say that the boss had collapsed.

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