Phone Etiquette

I've clearly got my phone etiquette all wrong.  The other day I was walking through Crapchester town centre when I heard this rough looking bloke, thuggish, if we want to be accurate, shouting into his mobile phone.  I say shouting, it was more bellowing really.  A very angry bellowing.  Anyway, what's important is what he was bellowing into his handset, which was as follows: "Answer your fucking phone, YOU FUCK!"  The last part being bellowed several decibels louder than the first bit.  I assume that he was leaving a message on somebody's voice mail.  Now, I don't know about you, but if were to check my voice mail and encounter a message like that, I'd pretty much be disinclined to answer.  In fact, I'd probably delete and block the sender's number.  Indeed, maybe that's why the recipient of this outburst apparently doesn't answer his phone when he sees this particular caller's number come up.

On the other hand, assuming the bellowing man was calling somebody he knew - although we can't entirely rule out the possibility that he dials random numbers and shouts scary and sweary messages at strangers' voice mails - this would seem to be his normal method of communication with his friends and acquaintances.  Perhaps using these tactics are how he ensures that people do return his calls - by scaring them.  Which leaves me pondering as to whether I've got it all wrong - I'm too polite when I leave voicemails, or even send texts.  People assume I can be safely ignored, as I won't make a fuss about it if they can't be bothered to respond.  Maybe I need to be more assertive - perhaps, when my boiler died the other week,  I would have had more success in getting heating engineers to call me back if I'd left messages along the lines of: "My fucking boiler is fucked, so fucking call me back you stupid fuck."  (I'm pretty sure that the repeated use of the word 'fuck' is key to improving my communication skills to the level of the bellowing man).  Maybe I'll try that with the garage next tie I book the car in for a service...