High-Tech Manners

High-Tech Manners

Cellular phones: When calling a cellular phone, try to keep the conversation brief and to the point. Also remember that no cellular phone conversation is completely private – your voice may be accidentally broadcast on another cell phone, or, worse yet, purposely picked up by an ill-willed eavesdropper.

Answering machines: Keep outgoing messages clear and brief. Avoid playing elevator music or telling jokes if you don’t want to be annoying. Remember that it’s unnecessary to say that you can’t get to the phone – that will be obvious to the caller. A sample outgoing message: “Hello, you have reached (your name and phone number). Please leave your name, phone number, and message, and we’ll call you back as soon as we can. When leaving a message on an answering machine, follow the same rules: be brief and clear, leave all the information requested in the outgoing message. Try not to hold an extended one way conversation unless you don’t really want to talk to the person you’re calling, anyway.

High-tech manners. Whole Foods. Photo by Elena

Call waiting: The best advice is not to succumb to this rudeness at all. But if you must and your conversation is interrupted by a beep signaling another call on your line, sound sincere in your apology to the person with whom you are talking. Switch to the other caller, and quickly explain to him or her that you’ll call back. Then return to the original conversation and apologize again.

Texting: If you are texted while being in a company, politely excuse yourself to answer or to make the necessary phone calls. You are not required to reveal the nature of the call unless you must leave the dinner party, show, or other event.

Call forwarding: This feature allows you to send all of your calls to another phone number, usually the phone of a family or friend. It is handy sometimes, but call forwarding can be a huge inconvenience to a host, particularly one that already has to contend with the phone habits of teenagers under the same roof. If you forward your calls, be sure to ask permission from the person who will answer the line where your calls will ring. And when you receive a call at someone else’s house, keep it brief.