Under which circumstances it's appropriate to pick up your colleague's phone if he's on leave?

Question

I have this situation where my colleague, who is of similar rank as I am, went for a long holiday (approximately a week).

There have been many calls coming in on his phone line, and I'm not sure if I should be picking the phone up because most of our work done is by teamwork, (meaning to say that if one person is not around, another can just pick it up and complete it). Normally we hardly pick up each other's phones, but it gets worrying that the said colleague on leave is getting plenty of calls when he clearly didn't do his due diligence before leaving

I work in a backline of a bank, doing administrative work. Due to the nature of my work, a lot of deadlines have to be met and I'm asking in the viewpoint of what is culturally and morally acceptable to do since a lot of my work with my colleague is overlapping.

Answer 1

No, but you should tell his boss to have his calls forwarded to somebody in the meantime so that:

1. The ringing phone doesn't bother anyone in the office.
2. People from the outside can get their business processed expediently.

Answer 2

One word - NO. Maybe this is a US thing but that is his phone and if he wanted business questions forwarded to you then he should have put that on his message.

If business support is failing then wait for your boss tell you to pick up his phone.