Hang Up the Phone

One of my favorite summer places for cheap and cheerful eats is a little seaside snack shack called Blue Light. The Blue Light is not fancy. It is not even a restaurant per se. There are no tables inside, only a couple of very stiff benches out front that discourage loitering and offer no shade from the scorching August sun. The food is excellent. My point? This is not a fancy place. As for the establishment’s attitude toward the cell-phone-rudeness epidemic, there is a sign on the counter that says it all: “We will gladly take your order when you have finished your cell phone conversation.”

If it seems SP is on the war path of the little electronic leash lately, I suppose this could be true. I receive many requests here to address this plague and have resisted – thus far — as the reach of this problem seemed too established to reverse and frankly, I felt I could ignore the issue when it was confined to the Paris Hilton set. Well, the virus has entered my world and it must be addressed as events of recent weeks have shaken me from this complacency.
A very fine lady I know — let’s call her Willa Winecup – regaled me with this story. Mrs. Winecup’s sixteen year-old son has taken a new girlfriend and said girlfriend was expected for dinner on a recent evening. Now my Mrs. Winecup was as excited — and apprehensive — as any mother would be to meet the new little lady in her son’s life. On the appointed evening, the door bell rang and Mrs. Winecup answered the door. What did she notice when she first laid eyes on the object of her son’s affection? Her beauty? Her charm? Her dazzling smile or bright shiny hair? Well, no. Little Lady was engrossed in a telephone call. Mrs. Winecup waited a few seconds to allow the girl to end the call and accept her welcome to her home. Little Lady never acknowledged Mrs. Winecup and had no intention of ending the call. Mrs. Winecup politely closed the door in Little Lady’s face and went back to her kitchen.

Another tale: There is a very stylish man I know – we’ll call him Mr. Flaunt — who is welcome at any event and in fact makes most events slide into gear when he arrives. I have noticed that Mr. Flaunt has started to make a habit of entering a party while in full-throated conversation on his cell phone. Into a private house! He enters elegantly, mind you, dressed to the nines and impeccably groomed, but with one accessory too many. The cell phone is glued to his ear. He enters, puts the other guest on hold and has even held up a finger of pause to his host. Oh, no. Where to begin?

Hang up the phone. End the call in the car, the sidewalk, the front porch, wherever. One should never enter a home on the phone, or let the door open while still on the phone. The call should end before the bell is rung. If by the rare chance the call is an emergency, one would inform the host and excuse himself to a private room. One would never stand in the middle of a group of people while talking on the phone. If I weren’t such a big fan if civility, I wouldn’t mind seeing someone pry the phone out of his hand and toss the contraption into the goldfish pond.

As for receiving calls at the dinner table, private home or public restaurant, don’t. The same goes for texting. One should not constantly check for texts at the dinner table. This constant checking the phone and responding is disrespectful to the host and to the company assembled at table. If it is a man’s intention to telegraph to the people around him that they are of no importance to him, then by all means he should continue with this abominable behavior. He should not expect to be invited back again. If there is an emergency or he is a doctor on call, he should check discreetly and leave the room if he needs to respond. Business calls and we’re-meeting-at-the-corner-bar texts do not constitute an emergency. To paraphrase the Blue Light, we will gladly welcome your company when you have finished your cell phone conversation.