Cell Phone Etiquette

When I was a kid growing up in the sixties, we had a solitary pink rotary dial phone on the middle floor of our three story house. Whenever the phone rang, all activity in our household immediately ceased and everybody made a mad gallop to answer that ridiculous telephone. If it rang while we were all still in bed, everybody threw aside the bed covers and dashed for the stairs, with whacky bed hair and crazed, hollowed eyes. But that phone never went unanswered, unless there was nobody home to hear it ring.

In the early eighties, somebody had the good sense to invent the answering machine. This was the relatively peaceful period of phone evolution, now we could let a machine do the answering. We didn’t yet carry personal phones around with us, so if we were away from our houses (and therefore our phones) it didn’t matter. A simple machine handled the call for us.

Then a few years later we got cell phones. At first, only well-paid executives had them, and they could be seen walking around trendy restaurants with a brick phone glued to their ear. I regarded them with some disdain; I thought they were just show-offs, trying to look important.

Fast forward a few years, and now everybody seems to have a personal phone; they are compact, they often have integrated cameras, the phones are cheap or sometimes free, the plans are affordable, the coverage extends to even tiny little northern towns, the batteries last forever between charges, so why wouldn’t we all have one?

Apparently we all do, and many of us have forgotten our manners while under its spell. There is something terribly compelling about a ringing phone. What really gets me is that we have now regressed back to the sixties again – if the phone rings, no matter what else is happening, it must get answered. A few years ago, a friend and I went for lunch at Citta’s. While waiting for our server, my cell phone rang and I answered it. My friend looked at me with shock and horror at what she perceived to be very tacky behavior – to answer a phone while at a restaurant. She was right of course – it is tacky behavior. Since acquiring a cell phone of her own however, I have observed on a couple of occasions that she violates her own rule. After all, the subconscious message says, this call is for ME!

Because I find it so irritating and rude that someone will answer their phone while talking to me, I have decided upon a rule of etiquette for myself. The rule goes like this: if I am involved in any kind of social interaction with a real, live human being, then that is the first priority. If the cell phone rings, press the silence button, and let it go to VOICEMAIL! Since adopting this rule I have noticed my stress level has gone down when my phone rings. I no longer have to decide whether or not to answer my phone. My rule has taken care of that decision. Now I can wait until I have a quiet moment, when I am not having a conversation or driving my car, I can sit down, listen to my voicemail messages, write down what needs to be written down, and call the important ones back. The non-urgent ones can either be deleted and ignored or perhaps just pushed back a bit. The urgency is gone, the stress is gone, and I know that I am doing my part to practice good cell phone etiquette.