The Vine: April 1, 2008
Dearest Sarah,
I write to you regarding the use of cell phones at inappropriate times. No, I don’t mean in the movie theater or at church; I feel this is well covered territory, as it should be. I am talking about cell-phone use while you’re at lunch or dinner with a friend.
I recently had lunch with a dear friend who is also a big fan of Tomato Nation. The timing of the lunch wasn’t good as he had plans beforehand and after and things were a tad rushed. However, to make matters worse, he kept looking at his phone repeatedly, checking his voicemail, took at least one phone call, etc.
Now, I feel that, when you make plans with someone, your attention should be on that person. I can understand if you’re an emergency room physician on call, or if you’re waiting for a two-second call to confirm something happening later, or if you’re waiting for someone to join you, or if something serious is happening with the family and you need to know. However, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that this is explained at the beginning of the lunch/dinner/whatever date. Even regarding something serious and private, a simple, “There’s something going on that I can’t get into, but I may have to take a call.” I’m a good friend and an understanding person. This sort of explanation would make sense to me.
However, this sort of explanation was not provided and I found the whole experience very annoying. I don’t think I’m alone in this. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect people to NOT ANSWER THEIR PHONES when they’re at lunch or dinner with someone. This isn’t even going into how rude it is to other patrons of the establishment.
What did regular, non-emergency-room-physician-type people do BEFORE the advent of cell phones? Did they run to the pay phone near the bathrooms every five minutes? No. They simply did not get the calls. Or they checked their voicemail after the meal. OR they stayed at home and waited for the calls. OR they went to the hospital and waited with the person from whom they would expect the calls. When did it become acceptable to answer and engage in cell-phone conversations when dining out? To me, it’s one thing: RUDE.
I guess I have two issues. One is that if you have something super-important going on, you should probably be dealing with that instead of trying to squeeze in some “quality” time with a friend.
The other, PRIMARY point, is that it’s downright inconsiderate to talk on the phone when you’re out with a friend. Your friend made time for you and you should do the same for your friend. Calls can wait. They did before cell phones and they should now.
Please weigh in on this as we both respect your opinion and it would mean a lot to us.
GC
Dear G,
You know, we did get along fine before everyone in our circle of acquaintance could reach us 24/7, or could follow our emotional rhythms on Facebook all day. Ten, twelve years ago, if I had a dinner with one friend and a meet-up planned with another afterwards, I ate dinner, then found a pay phone and called in to my voicemail — or I just…met them. We said 9 PM, we showed up at 9 PM, because we had to; nobody had a cell phone. (I actually did have a cell phone for safety reasons in ’98, but gave it back at the end of the contract because it weighed a ton — ’98, remember — and I didn’t need it.) There isn’t anything wrong with reachability or with social networking, but sometimes I wonder if we as a society shouldn’t maintain the ability to go out of reach and stay there for a few hours, or days, every now and then.
But it’s not the world we live in now, which is fine. It’s also fine if my friends need to leave their phones on the table in case the sitter calls, or explain to me up front that they may have to take a wedding-planning-crisis call quickly — or if an unexpected call comes in and they tell the caller they’ll talk later.
But any cell-phone- or Blackberry-related behavior that makes me feel like I’m boring them or that they have better things to do is impolite; if you do in fact have some sort of emergency in progress, you should really go address it, or at least explain that that’s the case, and you should leave any non-emergent communications for after the engagement. Do not answer emails under the table while I’m talking. Do not agree to eat out during Idol and then IM your friend about the performances with one hand while eating salad with the other. If you wanted to stay home and watch Idol, you should have done that; we could have done that together, and ordered in Chinese. Failing that, here you are, so let your DVR handle it.
I do have a few friends who have trouble resisting the siren song of their portable devices, but a pointed “Is everything all right?” usually takes care of it, and if that doesn’t work, following up with an even more pointed “Do you need to go take care of…that?” can do the trick.
But let me make it explicit: when you’re spending time with a friend, spend time with the friend. Be able to focus on one person at a time. And if a friend asks you, while glancing at your phone, if everything’s okay, this is her way of telling you that said phone is interfering with your interaction. If you need to have your phone on, apologize and explain that that’s so. If you needn’t — and 90 percent of the time, believe me, you needn’t — take the hint and put the phone in your bag, on vibrate. You aren’t that important — unless you are, but it’s still not cool to make your friends feel un-important.
Tags: etiquette
