telephone tag

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun idiomatic A situation in which a person unsuccessfully attempts to contact another person by telephone and leaves a message instead, and in which the second person then unsuccessfully attempts to return the initial call and leaves a message for the first person, and so on as if the two are playing a game of tag in which the most recent person to have been left with a message is now designated as "it" (i.e. as the player now obliged to chase the other and to attempt anew to make contact).