Please do not call us

In the early days of telecommunication, phone etiquette was non-existent. Every language created its own version of the message that indicated the line was open and the ear was listening. The French used to say "j'ecoute" ("I am listening"). German and Dutch usually just state their last name, and the Spanish will demand you to speak ("Diga,"), unlike the more mellow Mexicans who just say "Bueno" – good. The word "hello" was initially reserved for expressing surprise or to call for attention until Thomas Edison popularized it for the telephone. Now the world is flat and we all use Hello, with regional variations: Ola, Allo, Hallo, Hullo, Haloo, Alô and Hola. Except in Taiwan, of course.

In Taiwan, the common telephone greeting is "Wei", which can be pronounced as a brief "way" or a more drawn-out "whaay". The word "Wei" itself has no real meaning in itself; it is only used for answering the phone, never as salutation in other encounters.

In many businesses in Taiwan, an incoming international phone call in English is seldom seen as a potential business opportunity. Instead, it is often seen as a frantic problem and the source of a mini-crisis in the office. In a culture where embarrassment is the highest punishment, an overseas call can be the experience from hell for the poor soul who happens to field the call. The solution: just keep saying "hello" until they give up, but using Wei instead of Hello, of course. A comedy of errors.

My first encounter with Taiwanese phone etiquette was before I moved, calling from New York to a realtor in Taipei to inquire about an apartment.

Wei?

• Mr. Wei? Hi! My name is Luuk.
• Wei!
• Eh… Nice to meet you, mister Way. I'm calling about the apartment.
• Whaay?
• …why? Well, I would like to rent it…?
• Waaaaay?
• … Because the neighborhood looks good and the price seems right...?
• [silence]
• Mr. Way?
• Wei…?
• Yes?
• [click]

Only after moving to Taiwan did I realize the poor man's predicament: a paying customer and him with no functional English. How embarrassing. Wei Wei was obviously the way to go.

Just hanging up to get out of a sticky phone situation is common in Taiwan. Also common is freezing – staying on the line, trying to breathe as quietly as possible, silently waiting for the problem to go away, hoping you will disconnect first.

Americans and Europeans are drilled in the art of phone etiquette. Callers are greeted with a humble request: "how may I direct your call?" or are asked to "please wait for the next available operator", because "your call is important to us". Westerners are all about being nice on the phone. Hanging up in mid-conversation is the worst possible insult of all – the glass fiber equivalent of a slap in the face.

Many Taiwanese employees (especially civil servants in governmental organizations) will just hang up when they hear English, hoping that the caller was accidentally connected to their office by some twisted fate of undersea cable entanglement. If you persist and ring again, it is not uncommon they will not answer the phone at all – best let that one lie. A good time to take a bathroom break and wait for an unsuspecting co-worker to pick up the phone.

This invariably leads to the "Wei Wei Hot Potato". The poor Taiwanese office person who finally fields your call will, upon hearing English, physically toss the phone to an unsuspecting colleague. The poor recipient, upon hearing your English voice, will try to offload the phone to someone else, like a frantic boy scout dancing around the campfire tossing a steaming hot potato from hand to hand, looking for a next victim. Round and round the office goes the phone and all you hear is muffled cries, urgent whispers and giggling – as if you are eavesdropping on a sleepover party. And finally the loser of this game of musical phones is left with no one to hand the phone to – a poor sap who probably bragged about his English verbal skills in the break room a week ago and now reaps the bitter reward. He or she will say a shaky "hello" with such trepidation that you almost want to hang up to spare them the torture.

You can't blame international entrepreneurs for being discouraged by such a phone experience with Taiwan. If a business can't even answer the phone, what are the odds they can ship a container to your company?

Long gone are the days that Taiwanese business could just sit back and wait for the customers to come to them. To make it in today's global, interconnected world, businesses should make an effort to reach out, to connect and to communicate. Simply saying "Hello" instead of hanging up would be a good place to start.