....and cell phone etiquette in general is non-existent.
It gets worse the younger you are but even baby boomers of my age have turned into rude workers. Back in the days of pagers I refused to even look at my pager if I was in a meeting with a customer. To me nothing says "you are not as important to me" than pulling your pager / cell phone / blackberry out when you are talking to someone or you are participating in a meeting. NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING is so important that you cannot wait until the next break to check your messages.
There is a bio in the NY Times about the retiring head of Delta Airlines. His comment about the rudeness of blackberries sums it up very well:
"Q. How do you run meetings?
A. One, get the materials out ahead of time and make sure they are succinct and to the point. Second, start the meeting on time. Third, I tend to be a stoic going into the meeting. I want the debate. I want to hear everybody’s perspective, so you want to try to ask more questions than make statements.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to use BlackBerrys in meetings. You might as well have the newspaper and open the newspaper up in the middle of the meeting."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/business/26corner.html?em
It gets worse the younger you are but even baby boomers of my age have turned into rude workers. Back in the days of pagers I refused to even look at my pager if I was in a meeting with a customer. To me nothing says "you are not as important to me" than pulling your pager / cell phone / blackberry out when you are talking to someone or you are participating in a meeting. NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING is so important that you cannot wait until the next break to check your messages.
There is a bio in the NY Times about the retiring head of Delta Airlines. His comment about the rudeness of blackberries sums it up very well:
"Q. How do you run meetings?
A. One, get the materials out ahead of time and make sure they are succinct and to the point. Second, start the meeting on time. Third, I tend to be a stoic going into the meeting. I want the debate. I want to hear everybody’s perspective, so you want to try to ask more questions than make statements.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to use BlackBerrys in meetings. You might as well have the newspaper and open the newspaper up in the middle of the meeting."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/business/26corner.html?em
