Was he expecting anything else?
"Doesn't anyone say 'goodbye' anymore?"
— AJ, The Fairly OddParents!, "Transparents!"
The inability for main characters who answer the phone to either hang up the phone, acknowledge the caller, or say any "good-bye" equivalent. This is because phone calls are often done solely for exposition, and saying good-bye is seen as wasting valuable screen time.
If there is no split-screen and the other end is not heard by the audience, characters are also required to repeat back everything the person on the other end says to them.
Compare Rudely Hanging Up, where a character does this deliberately to make a point.
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Examples:
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Films — Live-Action
- A Running Gag in the film 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag involves the primary antagonist's inability to have a normal phone conversation, usually in the form of destroying the receiver instead of saying goodbye and hanging up.
- Twice in Bridge of Spies. In the first scene, Abel receives a phone call from his superiors and doesn't give any sort of greeting. Later on, the American agent receives a call from an East German agent, and silently picks up the phone, listens, then hangs up without a word. One would think in that situation it would be important to verify who you're talking to.
- Ghostbusters features a moment where the 'Busters overworked secretary Janine answers the latest in an endless series of client calls with "Ghostbusters, whaddya want?!"
- Averted in the Danish Police Procedural The Guilty, which is told from inside an emergency services dispatch center (meaning that the entire film unfolds through a series of phone calls). The characters say goodbye before hanging up except when they're Rudely Hanging Up or the call is otherwise interrupted.
- In Layer Cake, the protagonist remarks "That's rude, Mr. Dragan", after the caller (a psychopathic Serbian hitman) hangs up without saying goodbye.
- Shadow of the Thin Man: After receiving a vital piece of information over the phone during the Summation Gathering, detective Nick Charles slams the phone down without saying goodbye.
- Shaft does it in style...
Shaft: Vic, your case just busted wide open.
Androzzi: So close it for me.
Shaft: Cut the crap man, this is Shaft. Looks like you gonna have to close it yo'self, shitty! [cackles and hangs up, walks away, theme song music plays] - In The Smiling Lieutenant, the lieutenant gets the news from a lady friend that he is being forced to marry a princess he's not interested in. He hangs up the phone without saying goodbye.
Literature
- Discussed in Adrian Mole. In Growing Pains, he phones his parents when he has run away from home, and notes that the phone isn't snatched up immediately like it is in the films about runaway children.
- Star Wars Legends: Emperor Palpatine needs no comm etiquette, as is pointed out in Shadows of the Empire. He has a habit of stating what he wants without greeting, then ending the conversation without any kind of farewell. His subordinates have learned to accept this as 'just one of those things'.
- Lampshaded in The Godfather; Michael Corleone has a habit of doing this, but it's done on purpose by the author to reflect his all-business personality.
- In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when Ron Weasley calls to try to talk to Harry, Vernon Dursley tells him that there is no Harry Potter there, to never contact him again or come near his family, and "throws the receiver back onto the telephone as if dropping a poisonous spider." But given that it's Vernon and that Ron was shouting, not knowing how to properly use a "fellytone," it's pretty much to be expected.
- In Troubled Blood from the Cormoran Strike Novels, when Cormoran Strike's old friend Shanker is finished with a conversation with Strike, he simply hangs up the phone.
Shanker tended not to bother with goodbyes.
- Discussed repeatedly in The Meg Langslow Mysteries series, mostly involving Meg's nephew Kevin. He never says hello when he picks up, never says goodbye, and Meg vows several times to teach him proper phone etiquette.
Live-Action TV
- Fawlty Towers: Justified in "The Germans", as throughout the episode, Sybil is constantly phoning to check up on Basil. At first, he starts and finishes the calls normally, but as this goes on, he does not bother to check who is calling; at one point he picks the phone up, yells into it, and immediately slams it down again.
- In Law & Order (and later Law & Order: SVU) Captain Cragan invariably answers the phone by yelling "What?".
- David Sandstrom of ReGenesis answers with an impatient "Yeah?" or, later in the series, "What?" This seemed to vary in its hostility based on whether or not another then-present character was prodding him to answer his phone.
- On Covert Affairs, Annie calls Auggie on this early in an episode, saying that "normal people" say good-bye. He replies that it's just one more reason not to. This becomes a very minor comedic subplot, until the end of the episode, when Auggie is going off on his own to seek revenge. Annie knows something is wrong when he says . . .
Auggie: Good-bye, Annie.
- "What?" is Miss Parker of The Pretender's signature greeting.
- 24. Nobody ever says goodbye on the phone, which is a little funny since Jack spends at least half the series on one.
- Characters on Seinfeld seemed to have a particular aversion to saying goodbye.
- The Brady Bunch: Mike calls a friend of his about a problem; he jumps right into the topic and doesn't say goodbye. Robert Reed wrote one of his many scathing memos about this scene.
- Fearless: Gaia Moore greets callers with "speak".
- Forever tends to do this with Adam's calls to Henry. Since Adam is stalking Henry and wants to keep him off-balance this is somewhat justified.
- Parodied along with everything else on Garth Marenghis Darkplace. Most of the time, characters will end even the most desperate and ominous conversations with an inappropriately casual "Bye!" At the other end of the scale;
Thornton Reed: [picks up phone] Uh huh. Bye. [hangs up] Good gravy. A small bunch of objects are flying of their own accord in E Wing! [picks up non-ringing phone, then hangs up without saying anything] And apparently more objects are heading this way! [hesitantly, in the direction of the telephone] Good...bye...
- On Barney Miller, a man tried to commit suicide by drinking a chemical. Wojo called Poison Control to ask what to do, but they needed to know what chemical the man drank. Eventually he reveals that it was food coloring. Wojo says "Food" into the phone, then realizes what the man said, and hangs up without another word.
- Lampshaded in Broad City: "She didn't even say 'Bye, Lincoln'. That takes one more second. People have no phone etiquette these days."
- Parodied in That Mitchell and Webb Look: one sketch features Da Chief angrily yelling at a subordinate over the phone and slamming it down... only to pick it back up after a few moments and apologize sincerely for being so rude and unprofessional.
- On a Season 6 episode of Grimm, Sean Renard does this on a video call. When the conversation was finished he simply closed the chat window.
- Father Ted once had Dougal finish a phone call by simply dropping the handset and letting it fall to the floor as he walked away.
- On The Mentalist, Teresa Lisbon likes to do this to Patrick Jane sometimes. Given that it's Jane, it can almost be said to be a Justified Trope.
- Sherlock: Whether they're talking to a terrified hostage, or talking to the villain, or are the villain, people in this show are terribly polite and almost invariably answer the phone with "hello". Saying something along the lines of "goodbye" at the end, not so much.
- In No Soap, Radio, the regulars at the Pelican Hotel have no qualms about injecting themselves into Roger the manager's phone calls.
Roger (on telephone): "This is a really nice hotel."
Tuttle: "A DUMP!"
Mr. Plitzky: "A fancy dump!"
Theatre
- Craig's Wife: Harriet hangs up on Ethel's suitor Mr. Fredericks abruptly, after saying "I don't care to disturb her just now. I'm very sorry." Justified in this instance as Harriet is trying to keep them apart.
Video Games
- Inverted in the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Old World Blues: After Dr. Mobius delivers his terrifying broadcast from the Forbidden Dome, he caps it off with a cheerful "That is all. Bye bye."
- In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, nobody seems to say "good-bye" talking on the ARCUS unit. For example, when Instructor Neithardt calls Rean in Chapter 4 to ask him to swing by the lounge, he simply repeats his request at the end of the conversation and then clicks off. Rean even lampshades it at one point when Sara makes the same request...
Sara: I'll be waiting in the faculty lounge. Later!
Rean: Didn't even wait to hear my response...
Web Original
- The Jolly Roger Telephone Company provides bots that are designed to frustrate telemarketers and scammers. Despite all their training, there are times when the bots wear them down so much that they simply end the call without saying goodbye in some fashion.
Web Videos
- In The Guild, the leader of the evil guild is overtly rude over the phone. He answers the phone by stating the activity that you're interrupting, like "Journalling!" He also hangs up abruptly without saying goodbye, which confuses Cyd.
Western Animation
- Lampshaded in one episode of The Fairly OddParents!, Timmy is talking on the phone with Chester and AJ (in a three way split screen). After the conversation is over he hangs up as does Chester. AJ is still hanging on the line when he realizes the other two hung up. He looks at the camera and asks "Doesn't anyone say goodbye anymore?"
- Played for comedy in The Life & Times of Tim, when Tim bungles a call from a prospective employer by hanging up when he thinks the conversation is over. After a pause, the caller continues speaking, not realizing that he's hung up.
- Played for Laughs in American Dad!, when Steve and Hayley call Francine's mom for plot-related reasons. Once they have the needed exposition they put the phone down and start talking to each other, ignoring her.
Mah-Mah: Hey! What wrong with you?! I still here! Now tell me about your day.
Hayley: Oh, I'm sorry, Mah-Mah. Well, this morning I went—
Mah-Mah: [abruptly hangs up] Mah-Mah always hang up first. - Peppa Pig has become known on the Internet for a scene in which Peppa, unable to whistle, hangs up on Suzy Sheep when she whistles on a phone call despite claiming not to even know what whistling is.
Suzy: Hello?! Peppa?
- In "Slumber Party" from the PBS animated The Berenstain Bears, every time that Sister and Lizzie take another call from someone else wanting to attend Lizzie's slumber party, they wrap up the conversation with "Sure, what's one more?" and hang up.
Real Life
- In South Korea, when a phone conversation is over, the callers simply hang up. Saying goodbye is not needed, although they may make a certain "Hmm" sound, indicating that they're about to hang up.
- The book Nee Naw: Real Life Dispatches From Ambulance Control addresses the issue of citizens who interact with emergency call takers this way. "In soaps, people call for an ambulance, bark an incomplete address and then hang up. And then, nee naw nee naw, the ambulance arrives." In real life, the dispatcher needs to keep you on the line to provide details about the patient's symptoms, verify where you are and generally make sure the paramedics are as informed as possible by the time they arrive, in addition to talking you through any first aid that may be necessary.
