Phone Slaves

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use. ~Emily Post


There are few things I find more rude than someone talking on their mobile phone while interacting with another human being. I am not a champion of good taste and etiquette so, if I can identify a behavior as rude it must be really bad. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen a person in a checkout line trying to pay a cashier for their merchandise while talking to someone else on their mobile phone. These people don't value the other person enough to give them a few moments of their time for an interaction. I find this extremely rude. I am willing to bet these rude people would be highly offended if the cashier chatted away on a mobile phone while scanning the goods.

Essentially, this lack of common courtesy tells the other person that they have no real value other than processing goods through a line, they are not worth a smile or the common pleasantries we often offer to our pets. Is the mobile conversation so important that it can't be put on hold for the couple of minutes it takes to exchange money for goods? I find the behavior to be worse than rude, I find it to be dehumanizing.

There no longer seems to be any phone free zones. Besides the workplace and stores, people talk on them in theaters during the movie, in the middle of a celebratory toast, while at an intimate dinner, in the bathroom. Plus the conversations are so loud, people around can hear everything you say, including intimate details that should only be shared with a spouse.

When did our society become slaves to their phones? When did calls become so important that people routinely walk out of a business meeting often with multiple attendees to talk on the phone to one person? I understand that there are emergencies and those emergencies must be addressed but the frequency with which some people must interrupt an interaction to answer a phone tells me their lives must be a continuous tragedy.

I understand that parents need to be available for their kids. I think they have gone way over the edge and answer their phones whenever the kids call. Our parents couldn't reach us at a moment's notice nor could we reach them. Yet, when we were growing up, we somehow managed to survive. I can't imagine the kids calling these days have any more emergencies than we did as kids.

I remember as kids rushing to answer a ringing phone. We made the mad dash to the phone for two reasons. One because, we wanted to know who was calling and, two, if the call wasn't answered we might miss a chance to go hangout with our friends. This was in the time before answering machines so, if the call was missed, there was no message or anyway of knowing who had rung us up. Once answering machines arrived the mad dashes ended and we were no longer slaves to the ring, ring, ring. We could listen to messages and return calls as they fit into the ebb and flow of our lives.

All mobile phones these days have voice mail so calls are never missed. They also have caller ID so we know who called in the event a voice mail is not left. If a someone does not leave a voice mail to an unanswered call I hazard to guess the call was not really important anyway.

In my place of business, I have frequent meetings with people in a 1 on 1 setting. In all the years I have been doing this, I may have interrupted the meeting to answer my ringing phone a few of times and, when this occurred, I always let them know before the meeting started that I was expecting an important phone call which I would have to take in the event the phone rang. I treat the person I am meeting with as the most important person in the world at that time, a person who's time is precious and nothing short of an emergency will result in me disrupting the meeting. I believe this makes them feel valued, feel important and know the appreciate my courtesy.

Just because we can be reached at anytime does not mean we have to be reached at any time. I, for one, refuse to be a slave to my phone. I will always place personal interactions over the beckoning of my phone. It's a simple courtesy I expect for myself and a simple courtesy I willing to extend others.