Traditional "receiver" phones v modern phones

I've never been any good at doing either of those to be honest with you

Also my phone rings when I am about to sit down for dinner without fail

I have managed to not answer a few times but it's taken me a long time to get there lol

I cannot see that there is any difference. In both cases you make an excuse and hang up. Simple if that's what you want to do.

It now rarely happens that I get someone I dont want to talk to as I have a blocker on my landline. You cant get through unless you are on my "white" list of friends/family/close business associates. If I see an unknown number I do google it but it often has a negative rating. Then I just block permanently. There have been occasions in the past when I answered the phone and really regretted it. Now I make sure Im in control.

You really need to send an email to get my attention.

Get someone to ring you on your mobile and say you have to go to take the call!

No idea what this means you can switch off either phone !!
Never done it anyway

I would have thought the opposite - a receiver was easily dropped back on its cradle but a mobile phone or even a landline handset you can do things while still talking (get something out of the oven, load the washing machine, do some dusting, straighten a blanket or some cushions, anything not too noisy) so there are far less excuses for hanging up.

I have a landline and a mobile the later is not used very much now and if I don't feel like answering the landline I just don't bother to pick up,I have never had a problem ending a call just say "sorry got to go now" and hang up swiftly.

I can activate my doorbell by pressing the test facility button on the back of the freestanding chimer unit - works perfectly and all I have to do is say "Oh, sorry, I have to go, there's someone at the door, bye."

I've been quite good at using a finger to cut the call on a receiver phone in the middle of a sentence so that it sounds like an accident. With my mobile it's not so easy though (maybe I need more practice).

I'm in an area of bad reception and this makes a wonderful excuse. Not that I do it often. It's long phone calls I don't like, people who go on and on and on, talking about themselves.
Then I occasionally give way to temptation....

A modern 'receiver' phone's handset is as portable around the house as a mobile is. I can also take mine into the garden. Mine's not specially modern - at least 18 years old, I have handsets upstairs and downstairs, but nowadays am just as likely to be called on my mobile. I have no problem cutting short a long and irritating call. 'Something burning in the oven' seems to work - but not every time!

I am probably thinking of the old black bakalite phones which somehow I found difficult to put down. I used to manage a busy branch library. People always rang at the least convenient time - Saturday afternoon when you had queues at both counters and all staff fully occupied. Of course you cant leave a phone ringing in a public building because its really irritating.

When I was a newish assistant I worked for one boss who used to make the phone call wait its place in the queue. He would answer and then give the caller the choice of waiting or calling back later. He was a communist and this was back in the 1960s when many people still did not have a phone. His argument was that the people who had taken the trouble to come to the library in person should not be pushed into second place by someone able to afford a phone and sit on their bum at home. Different times!

Later on I used to place a piece of black lego under the receiver for the really busy hour just after saturday lunch (2-3 pm) so the phone always rang engaged to outside callers. Then take it off when things calmed down a little. Of course someone would complain they had been trying to get through "all day" or "for hours". "Oh Im so sorry. We have been really busy today! Its always best to wait til after 3pm."