I have a system that takes it one step further and both reduces the awkwardness and false-positive rate at the same time: I add the people that I know to the contacts on my phone. When a call comes in as a number instead of a name, I simply decline to pick it up. If it's not a spam call, they will either leave a voice message or send a text. If they do neither, then either it was a spam/scam call, or whatever they had to say probably wasn't that important in the first place. Win/win.
I've been doing this for a little over a decade and it hasn't let me down yet.
I've been doing this for a little over a decade and it hasn't let me down yet.