Do you answer your phone at all times?

   1000 times over!!!

Yes, and no.

In your case, I would have been unhappy with someone calling for a non-emergency at 7 am. That's just rude unless they KNOW that you are OK with phone calls at that time. I would have answered but I probably would have let them know that it was too early for just chatting.

I do answer the home phone when it rings, but we have a call screening device that won't let automated or sales calls through. So if it does the partial ring AND then rings fully I will answer. We don't have caller ID on our home phone so if it rings through I pick up. I've gotten a lot of the late night, middle of the night, early morning phone calls that mean it's an emergency. And I am sort of the go-to person if someone ends up in an ambulance on the way to the hospital because we live 5 minutes from the hospital and I'm the medical POA for my mother, as my husband was for his mother. Plus, my brother has had some pretty serious health issues (pulmonary embolism, autoimmune kidney disease, on dialysis, etc.) and I am also his go-to person. But we live close enough that it makes sense for us to get the calls.

On my cell phone or classroom phone I will answer even if I don't know the number or it isn't in my contacts - once it was the ER calling to say my dad was there. It was not a number that I would have recognized. That was the day he died. In cases like that I do not want to have to listen to a message and maybe try to call back. And in some cases, even if I have a number for someone in my contacts, they may be using a different phone or it may be someone else calling on their behalf.

No.  I don't always answer the doorbell/door knock, either.  

Agree - anyone calling outside the 9's is rude.