Like I say, we’re all stressed by unexpected calls – which makes zero sense, as a) we all love our phones, and b) myself and every person I spoke to genuinely loves chatting on these beloved pieces of tech, so long as we know we’re going to be doing so. (Lots has been written about the millennial fear of the phone call; this isn’t that).

So, what’s the deal? Well, I have a theory.

Speaking from a purely millennial POV (sorry Gen Xers), things were different growing up. Phone calls were scheduled ahead of time, so that you could reserve the landline and chat without bothering your mum (“Ring me between 7 and 8pm, yeah?”), and mobile phones were predominantly used for texting. Because “minutes” – remember when we used to buy minutes? – were expensive, and the landline bill wasn’t really our problem.

Well, it wasn’t our problem until, y’know, the end of the month, when dad would come in brandishing the bill and demanding to know who we talked to for over 108 minutes one fateful Wednesday night.

Unexpected phone calls: confessions of people who hate answering the phone