March 7, 2010
With so much public concern about the H1N1 virus and other contagious germs, hand sanitizer dispensers are popping up everywhere! We see them at schools, the grocery store, office buildings, and just about everywhere else we go.
While these alcohol-based gels are an extremely effective way to kill germs and protect our health without breaking stride, they do have one major drawback… clammy hands!
When the alcohol evaporates, it always takes some body heat from your skin along with it. This leaves skin feeling chilled until your circulating blood warms it again. The same thing happens when we wash out hands. A little body heat leaves your skin with the evaporating water.
While this isn’t generally an issue for most people… it can certainly make for an uncomfortable handshake – for both people! How can you radiate warmth and brilliance… if the first impression you give someone is a clammy hand?
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Posted by Margaret in Everyday Etiquette and tagged first impressions, hand sanitizers, handshakes
February 17, 2010
Why, oh why, do people talk so LOUDLY on their cell phones? Everyone notices it, many complain about it… and yet everyone does it.
So, why? What is that phenomenon all about?
A friend of mine, who happens to be in the field of telecommunications, recently enlightened me on this matter. As it turns out, cell phones are missing a bit of technology that our land-line phones have – the mechanism that helps us hear ourselves talking.
In regular telephones, we have something called a network card. One of its functions is to re-route a bit of your speech from the mouthpiece back to the earpiece. The speaker hears themselves talking, which helps them regulate their speaking volume. This is called sidetone.
For some reason, cell phones don’t have sidetone, so we don’t hear ourselves through the earpiece. It doesn’t seem like that should matter much, but it does.
Because our first experiences were with land-line phones, we subconsciously learned to listen for our own voice through the earpiece. When we don’t hear it on cell phones, we instinctively TALK LOUDER.
Maybe this bit of information will help soothe your nerves when a fellow shopper is telling the entire store about her colonoscopy. Or, maybe not.
However, now that you know that we all tend to do this, make sure YOU don’t broadcast your personal life by accident. I promise you, the rest of us really don’t want to know.
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Posted by Margaret in Everyday Etiquette and tagged cell phone etiquette, privacy
February 13, 2010
If you ever…
- Interrupt a real-life conversation to take a (non-urgent) call
- Half-way participate in conversations while gazing at a screen
- Talk on a cell phone while paying for groceries
- Talk on the phone while using the restroom
- Fixate on a video/computer game (Solitaire, anyone?)
- Zone out and mindlessly eat in front of the television, then pullyourself off the couch and wonder where the hours (and food!) went…
…chances are, you’ve been techno-tized.
There’s something about the power of the almighty screen that shifts our minds into neutral. We suddenly become preoccupied and passive, falling into a trance where the screen dominates our attention while the world – and people – around us fade away.
If you’ve ever tried to talk to a child watching television, you understand this phenomenon well. But adults are just as guilty. We’ve all seen two people in a restaurant, ignoring each other but talking on cell phones as they eat.
To be fair, technology has come so far, so fast, that we can’t help but be fascinated. Have you seen computer graphics these days? And the animation in movies… wow!
But the point is this: technology is changing our culture – and it’s doing so at a shockingly fast pace. It takes us into uncharted social territory, where there are no rules (yet). And even if there were rules, they too would change by next year, maybe sooner.
So this leaves us all wondering: how do we behave? Where should we draw the line? What can we assume about what’s acceptable – and what’s not?
Here’s the bottom line: No matter how fascinating technology gets, do we really want to live in a world where people are more loyal to their entertainment, gadgets and games – than to other people?
Technology is as wonderful as its positive impact on our lives. The moment is starts drawing power from your relationships and real-world life, it’s probably time to…
*click*
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Posted by Margaret Page in Everyday Etiquette and tagged cell phones, distractions, technology, video games
With so much public concern about the H1N1 virus and other contagious germs, hand sanitizer dispensers are popping up everywhere! We see them at schools, the grocery store, office buildings, and just about everywhere else we go.
