Sometimes, it’s difficult to follow the rules of etiquette your mother taught you.  You do your best, but occasionally, you stray. Of late, we’ve found ourselves guilty of breaking one of them on more than one occasion: Don’t be rude.

What’s prompted us to ignore our childhood teachings? Telephone calls from those “taking a survey.’’ They seem to come at us fast and furious, and their timing usually stinks: When you’re still dripping wet after showering, when you’re trying to watch the evening news, or when you’re about to find out how the movie ends.

“We’re taking a survey and would like to ask you a couple of questions.”

“How long will it take?”

“Just a couple of minutes.’’

Five minutes later, you impatiently ask, “How much longer? “  You’re told they only have a couple more questions. After another three minutes, you’ve reached the boiling point. You hang up. Mother would not be proud.

Sometimes, the survey begins asking rather personal questions right up front, and a red flag goes up, signaling it’s time to hang up. As for political polls, we don’t care for them, and, based on some of the recent predictions on caucus votes, we don’t think they’re worth a hill of beans. Some of them have been so far off, it’s laughable. 

We often have callers who speak such broken English that we can’t understand them. This problem isn’t restricted to surveys. Many customer service employees are difficult to understand. Their command of the English language leaves much to be desired, as does our knowledge of their language, although truthfully we often can’t identify the accent.

A few years ago, there was a big push to get on a “Do not call’’ list if you were being annoyed by calls you didn’t want to get. Since then, the number of unsolicited telephone calls has escalated for most of us, and it didn’t take long for callers to “find’’ cellphone numbers for still another optional way to reach us.

Frankly, the best way to get rid of these crank calls, ranging from surveys to “You’ve just won an all-expense-paid Caribbean cruise’’ seems to be to ignore your mother’s advice and just hang up on them.  Sorry, mom.