Posts tagged "cell phone etiquette"
July 10, 2018
Over the past 9 months, I made over 500 phone calls to people around the world.
If you’re in a high-volume industry, such as sales, 500 calls might not sound terribly impressive. But for most of us in North America — unlike our counterparts in China and South America — phone calls are a dying breed. Americans, for example, spend six minutes per day on voice calls compared to 26 minutes for text messages. Millennials, as a rule, are more likely to text than call.
So why did I make 500 personal calls rather than rely solely on emails or even texting apps like Line or WhatsApp? Because hearing someone’s voice and having a real time conversation is a better way to make a personal connection.
I’m not suggesting you switch to an all-call communication style. But I did have several revelations that might encourage you to pick up the phone rather than peck at your keypad.
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Posted by Margaret Page in Uncategorized and tagged cell phone etiquette, cell phones, communication
July 5, 2016
Smartphones are ubiquitous — in fact, I’d wager that many of us aren’t even aware how often we rely on these powerful little computers. Stop and think for a second: How often do you pull yours out to check the time? To pass a few minutes when you’re standing in line? To dash off a quick email between meetings?
Smartphones are convenient, to be sure, and they keep us connected no matter where we are. But in a world built on relationships, is that really a good thing? What could you gain by putting away the phone?
We’ve become so inured to smartphones that many of us have forgotten the importance of human presence. Your full attention (and your discretion in giving it) is one of the most powerful tools in your professional toolbox, and it’s one worth developing. Here are a few tips on how you can break the smartphone habit.
Set Your Own Standard. I have a colleague who once worked for a home goods company. Several times a year, vendors would fly across the country to make presentations to the CEO, president, and other key stakeholders, including my colleague. “I was always appalled when I would look around the table and realize my co-workers were using this time as an opportunity to check their messages — even the president and CEO,” she says. “And what’s worse is that the president and CEO reinforced this behavior by making it seem OK in the first place.”
It can seem acceptable to behave poorly when even your superiors are doing so. But think about the vendors giving the presentations: These moments were important to them and their businesses. They deserved better.
Ban Phones From the Table. Phone use seems particularly egregious in an intimate setting, like a meal. What better opportunity to connect with a business associate than over lunch or a quiet dinner? A few years ago, the “phone stack” was popular: After a table ordered, everyone would stack their phones in the middle of the table. The first person to reach for their phone would pick up the bill. That’s a great idea among friends, but if you’re dining out with a colleague who has a habit of pulling out the phone, make your intentions clear. Try saying, “We so rarely get a chance to talk face to face. Isn’t a luxury these days? Why don’t we agree to keep our phones stashed while we eat?”
Safeguard Your Time. What if you’re the one having a hard time disengaging from the phone? Think about what constantly checking and responding to emails says about you: You have no boundaries. If you answer emails during meetings, non-working hours, or weekends, you’re setting an expectation that the times you have set aside as important should not be important to others. And in today’s 24/7 world, people will take advantage of your non-stop vigilance.
What are your smartphone pet peeves? Tell me in the comments below! If you’re interested in learning more about developing your business etiquette skills, please contact me for more information about upcoming workshops and events.
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Posted by Margaret Page in Etiquette Tips, Everyday Etiquette and tagged courtesies, etiquette tips, email etiquette, cell phone etiquette, cell phones
January 2, 2014
Yesterday, before a grueling dental appointment I stopped for a bite to eat at Whole Foods. When I discovered all the tables were occupied I headed for the long counter–somewhere I would not normally sit for lunch. As it was a high counter it took me a few minutes to position everything. My handbag–not appropriate to be on the counter…think of the germs –not good Feng Shui to set it on the floor, so the only spot left was hanging from my bent knee. Grocery bag on the floor, food in front of me, knife and fork ready, napkin on my lap…I was settled in for a nice lunch.
It would be hours before I could eat anything as my mouth would be numb from my dental work, so I was going to enjoy it!
Just as I began enjoying my meal a woman stood behind the counter two seats away from me. She plopped her food down and slid into the chair, talking on her phone the whole time. I wondered if she had gone through the check out line like that—with phone propped to her ear, chatting away. OMG!
Over the next five minutes, myself—and all the others around me—were privy to this beautiful young woman’s (who I now refer to as the pirate) personal conversation about a real estate deal. Whether we liked it or not, we were “in on the deal.” It was too much. There came a point when I couldn’t take it any longer. I was tired of being hijacked and was about to say “no more” and when I looked up, the woman on the other side of the pirate looked up at the same time. Our eyes met for a moment, and no it wasn’t love at first sight, but it was an instant knowing that all of us seated (or standing) near the pirate was being disrespected. “Seriously!” the woman exclaimed as she picked up her lunch and moved to a seat to the left of me, farther away from the pirate.
The woman, whose name I learned was Amelia, and I began a conversation about how disrespectful some people are. Amelia said she felt that some people had no community hygiene–or awareness of spacial hygiene. I quickly agreed. What an interesting way to phrase it.
Eventually the pirate ended her call and Amelia went over and shared her insights. “Did you know when you were on the phone you were speaking so loudly it disrupted our lunch?” she said to the woman. Amelia s tone of voice was non-threatening and she smiled as she spoke to the woman. The pirate was a clearly a little embarrassed and offered an apology. She then slumped over her plate and began eating her lunch as if it that, along with the awareness of her loud-talking disruption, was also hard to swallow.
Amelia gracefully and graciously did what I’m sure many of our readers would like to do- and that is to tell a person know when they have violated our space with their verbal chatter. An act that says (loud and clear) that: “What I am doing, or who I am, is more important than you.”
Here are three things we can learn from Amelia and the way she addressed the space pirate:
- When confronting your pirate about their loud talking, posing your comment as a question allows him or her to save some face — after all we do have manners. The question gives that person a reason to pause and think about his or her action, rather than just be TOLD that they were being disrespectful.
- The tone of your voice is critical in preventing a potential drama.
- Smiling helps the person understand you are informing them rather than ridiculing them or challenging them.
Try it out next time you encounter a space pirate and let me know what happens.
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Posted by Margaret in Everyday Etiquette and tagged cell phone etiquette
August 8, 2013
I was at the doctor’s office the other day, pleasantly flipping through the spring issue of a home and garden magazine, when my quiet moment was “hijacked” by another patient sitting across the room. There were about 20 people in the waiting room—all of us sitting quietly, waiting our turn. The key word here is … “quietly.” There were two children waiting for their grandmother, who were sitting ever-so-quietly—the young boy was playing with a Gameboy or some other handheld electronic device and the little girl, who couldn’t have been more than four, was happily coloring in her coloring book. The waiting room was… as expected…quiet.
And then the hijacking occurred.
I literally jumped, as I was absorbed in the article I was reading, when I heard this (very loudly) echo across the room: “What ethnicity am I? I know what race I am, but the papers they want me to fill out ask me for my ethnicity? So would you say I’m European? Should I put that? And what about my medication? I know I take X medication and Y medication, and then for my arthritis I take that Z medication, but what is it I take for the irritable bowel again?”
I glanced around the room to see that I wasn’t the only one who had their heads lifted, glancing (some glaring) at the woman in the center of the room who was practically yelling into her cell phone. She was filling out paperwork for the doctor and proceeded to go through every single question with the recipient on the other end of the phone. This went on for close to 15 minutes. When she was through with the form, she stayed on the phone to spill a little gossip about the lady who lives behind her who, in her words, “is always flaunting her wares up and down her driveway… why she can’t put on some clothes to get her mail is beyond me. It just ain’t right. Is it? I mean, she has grown teenagers and she walks around all…” Well, you get he picture. All 19 of us were subjected to this story…whether we wanted to be privy to it or not.
Our privacy—our silence—was hijacked!
I am sure every single one of you reading this has a story of being hijacked. Whether it’s in a doctor’s office, grocery store or in an elevator—there are so many people who don’t recognize that their conversations are hijacking the personal space of others.
In a recent study, published in the journal of PLoS One, college kids who were asked to complete anagrams while a nearby researcher talked on her cellphone were more irritated and distracted—and far more likely to remember the contents of the conversation. The study is part of growing research on why cell phones rank so high on the list of modern day irritants.
So what do we do to solve this? We would love to hear your thoughts, and your experiences. Let’s start a movement to “stop the hijacking!”
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Posted by Margaret in Communication and tagged cell phone abuse, hijacking personal space, cell phone etiquette
August 4, 2011
Everywhere you look, people are on cell phones. In the grocery stores, restaurants, movie theatres, shopping malls and doctor’s offices, people are talking (or texting) on their phone. Just the other day I saw a woman jogging in the park with a cell phone up to her ear. It just looked odd to me somehow.
There has been an explosion of smartphones on the market, and everyone seems to be texting. This has added an additional layer of communication etiquette challenges to the mix. It’s quieter to text someone, and it would appear that it’s less distracting, but if you’re with someone and you’re not fully engaged because you’re answering every beep and buzz from your cell phone, well that is not good manners. I know I don’t want to be sitting down for a romantic dinner with a man who is answering a text from the other side of the table!
Hold that call!
By taking a cell phone call while in the presence of others, you’re saying to the person you are with “there is something or someone more important than you are.”
Alternately, have you ever grabbed a call just because it was ringing? Even though you didn’t have time to chat. You probably would have been far better off letting it go to message. Right? Well, the same is true when answering a cell phone while with other people. It’s a distraction from the current conversation and often even changes the dynamics of the conversation after the intrusion.
As much as we talk on cell phones these days, there still seems to be a lot of people who don’t have a grasp on the etiquette of cell phone use yet. Just because we can talk to whomever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want, does that mean we should completely forget our manners?
Here’s a quick review of some cell phone etiquette tips:
- Don’t use cell yell when taking calls in public. Your voice sounds different on a cell and is louder and carries farther than you think.
- Avoid talking about personal topics when other people can hear you.
- If you must take a call when you’re already engaged in a face-to-face conversation, ask permission of the people who are with you. Then move away from them so they can carry on their conversation without your distraction.
- Do NOT text during face-to-face conversations.
- Maintain a distance of at least 10-feet from the nearest person when talking on your cell phone.
- When the lights are turned off, your phone should be, too (movie theatres, playhouses, etc.)
- Don’t place your cell phone on the dinner table, anywhere.
- Use common sense. Your phone should be turned off or to silent during a job interview, funeral, wedding, at the gym, in the bathroom, during a presentation, or any other setting where a quiet atmosphere is mandated.
Do you think there are others that belong on the list of cell phone dos and don’ts?’ List them in the comments section below.
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Posted by Margaret in Everyday Etiquette and tagged cell phone etiquette, manners, business etiquette, texting etiquette
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
