While we were at SxSW, Laura and I threw a Mobile Manners brunch with Intel. We gathered a group of very smart women to eat quiche and text one other about the irritating things people do with their gadgets.
Genevieve Bell, an Intel Fellow who studies how different cultures use technology, presented some of their mobile etiquette research.
During Genevieve’s presentation, I tweeted while she was talking (event hashtag, FTW), checked in to Foursquare, and texted with a person sitting two tables away from me. Afterward, I drove around town looking for a funeral parlor, because I’ve heard those are nice quiet places to make phone calls.
Everyone else was the picture of civility, even when the gift bags came out.
Now that’s some good home training.
The bags were a team effort amongst attendees, and as always we saved one for you. Maile brought her gorgeous Epiphanie Bags, and I set aside the Clover Laptop and Camera Bag in grey, which is the one I carry. Everywhere. And sometimes I spoon with it. It looks like this:
Elizabeth works for Twitter, but also has a letterpress business called Paperwheel Press. She brought everyone a couple of geeky letterpress thank you notes:
And finally, Intel threw in a copy of Emily Post’s Great Get Togethers:
To win, please leave your pinky out when you sip your tea, and leave your most profound mobile etiquette peeve in comments.
Please only enter once; I’ll leave comments open until Monday when I’ll announce the winner. I hope it’s you.
Mighty Girl 
Texting at the table. Any table. With anyone.
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I find it rude when someone is having a personal and/or vulgarity-laced conversation on their cellphone, very loudly, in a public place. Sure, no one is supposed to eavesdrop, but when you are shouting obscenities into your phone while my children are trying to tell me about their day over a restaurant meal, we can’t help being distracted.
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Personally, I may be in the minority on this one… but my absolute pet peeve is texting all of the time about everything. I know there are situations that warrant a short text message and that is fine… but I do not want to have long conversations with anyone on a text message. It drives me bananas!
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I cannot stand when people browse their phone’s ringers in public. Why do people do this? There is a time and place to debate and select an appropriate ringer and a public place is not one of them!
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For Reals:
The two girls next to me in yoga, texting each other from one-handed downward dog. And giggling.
Namaste.
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I have a co-worker who frequentyl carries on conversations in one of the 6 stalls of the bathroom while she does her business. I don’t want to add my noises to her background and I always wonder who she’s talking to, do they know? I don’t feel sorry when I have to flush.
I confess to loo conversations at home but only with my MA and closest friends. People I would pee with in person 🙂
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I was in a meeting last week and the chair of the meeting left his phone on full volume and when it would ring he answered and said, “In a meeting; call you later” and hung up. It was rude to the caller and to meeting attendees.
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my biggest annoyance – people who come over to visit my kids (or worse yet, i pack us all up and trek all the way to their house to visit) and after playing with the kids for 5 minutes, they spend the rest of the time on facebook or texting or playing bubblebreaker or some other annoying iphone bs. my father-in-law is a huge offender (he’s a bubblebreaker addict).
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I hate it when people hang up without leaving a message — just because it’s a cellphone and I can see what the number was doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate knowing who you are/why you’re calling etc!
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Talking on your phone while driving me. Yikes!
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Overheard on Caltrain at *least* once a day, with obvious train background noise: “WHAT?!? I’M SORRY I HAVE TO YELL, BUT I’M ON THE TRAIN?????”
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My pet peeve if when people don’t check their voicemail. I understand if it you were expecting the call and knew what it was about, but if not maybe I had something important to say to you! Sigh.
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I can’t stand the texting abbreviations (PTL, LOL, etc.) I don’t know what any of them mean!
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My pet peeve is when people who are discussing their personal life on the bus get angry that I’m listening. If you’re going to talk that loudly I want to know whether or not she was cheating.
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I’m a teacher at an independent school. Once a day, for 10 minutes, the entire school (faculty and students) come together for morning meeting. The kids aren’t allowed to use their phones (on penalty of an automatic detention) but there are a couple of adults – faculty – who stand at meeting and text. Way to model proper behavior!
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I am a graduate student and I often cringe when I see adult students obviously texting during a small class when they should be learning. We’re adults, we want to be there, right? I realize that this makes me sound prude, but I’m embarassed for the instructors and for my fellow generation Yers.
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I hate seeing families out a restaurant and each family member (kids included) has his/her face in their own electronic device. They don’t talk to each other, they barely look up to make eye contact with the server and place an order. Disgusts me.
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My boss does this and it aggravates me to no end…while just the two of us are talking about work he will answer his incoming call or text. Without warning (because his cell is on vibrate) he will just whip out his phone and say hello, as if I am not sitting right in front of him. Rude! As! Hell! I’ve told him my thoughts on this, didn’t change a thing.
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Please no tagging of unapproved photos on Facebook! I adhere to this rule and I expect you to as well, you casual acquaintance, you. 😉
I am just dying for that bag! Thanks, Maggie!
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Texting during dinner…or at dinner parties. My girlfriend is famous for this, which has led to my perfecting my deathglare. Unfortunately, she has become impervious to the deathglare. Must come up with stabbyglare next.
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I have to agree with several other commenters: people should not make cell phone calls in the bathroom. If you call me and I hear a toilet flush in the background, I AM HANGING UP.
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Hands down, the WORST is when people use their phone while sitting on the toilet. I have had the pleasure of being both the person in the next stall as well as the person on the other line. Ick.
The time that I was caught on the phone with the bathroom-talker it just happened to be when I was trying to find a photographer for my wedding. For whatever reason she answered to phone while peeing and then joked about it. Needless to say that stunt cost her the gig.
ick.ick.ick!
on another note – I LOVE all of the epiphanie bags!
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Holding a phone conversation while attempting to order at a cafe or approaching a cash register is just rude to everyone. The service person, the people in line behind you, the person at the other end of the conversation who just got “double latte” shouted at them for no apparent reason.
If I don’t win, knowing you wanted me to win makes it better. 🙂
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Oh, boy: mine’s kind of a reverse peeve. I hate it when people get cranky that I haven’t texted back immediately. Let me at least choose when to engage with you/my phone/the mobile universe!
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I hate it when people decide that instead of just talking to one person at a time they talk to you while talking to someone else through text when they are standing a few feet away. Just being on hold in real life due to a text message,that makes me so CRAZY!
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When someone publishes an image from a Big Deal event (i.e. wedding, birth, etc.) that the key people involved (couple, parents) would never, ever, ever want out. It’s just rude and happens more than it should.
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Texting (emailing, etc) while driving! It’s not rude, just very unsafe!
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I dislike when people start talking on their cell phone when they are with me in a car. Not just quick phone calls, but just chit chatting with some other person, as thought I’m not even there. It makes me feel like I’m his or her annoying kid sister. That should really only be something my older brother makes me feel.
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Enthusiastically playing iphone games that require shaking, twisting, and “bing! bing!” during rush hour on the Metro.
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Exciting HOT date. It’s been a while…….
You, the man of your dreams, candles the perfect table.
Then out of the corner of your eye his cell phone, on the table!!!! And what is worse!? It lit up with a text.
Thanks mr. oh-so-popular. Can’t even give me an hour of your life!
I rustle around for my phone (since he was on his) and tweet “well another one bites the dust!”
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Nothing is more frustrating to me than when the one other person I am sharing a meal with pulls out their phone to respond to a text. You’re telling me that I and the meal are not worth your time.
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I hate it when people text or tweet during meetings while holding the phone under the table. As though staring into your crotch and fiddling something with your hand is preferable to admitting you are on your phone.
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People who are out with somebody but text constantly and ignore the person they’re with.
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It drives me insane that my bosses (who have work-sponsored devices) assume I have a smart phone and will check email even when they know I’m not at my desk. Even though they know I don’t have a smart phone. Email shouldn’t be used for urgent messages when you know the person is en route from one location to another. Phones make calls and send texts!
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I hate when I see two people out to dinner and they both pull out there cell phones and plop in them on the table like a third dinner guest. They then proceed to spend the meal texting and checking their Facebook status instead of interacting with each other!
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My most profound mobile etiquette peeve: people who text during movies.
Second most profound mobile etiquette peeve: graduate students who use Facebook during my class.
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I can’t stand it when people don’t answer their phones, but don’t turn off the ringer or send the call to voicemail. If your phone starts ringing and you don’t think you can answer the call due to where you are, don’t you think that the ring is just as offensive as you talking? It takes all of 3 seconds to silent or reject the call. Please do it.
As for the tea with the pinky finger sticking out – my due to a recessive genetic trait, my pinky always sticks out when I drink tea (or do anything else for that matter).
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There are so many peeves in this hyper-technology world we live in, but my #1 has to be doing anything involving electronics (phone, blackberry, etc. etc.) at the DINNER TABLE, whether at a restaurant or in someone’s private home. It’s simply, unacceptably rude.
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Biggest mobile etiquette pet peeve- texting, or pulling out your phone to check messages, in the middle of a conversation.
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Gotta be people yammering away in the check out line. The person trying to help you deserves your attention. Put that phone away!
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When the person you are conversing with is texting while talking to you.
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I have a smart phone and no landline, as do most of my friends but I really do hate it when people use their phones at all at inappropriate times. I don’t want to overhear your conversation on the train, or have coffee with you while you are texting and facebooking.
I really wish we brought back etiquette training.
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Public restroom phone callers. Am I really hearing your pee AND your conversation with your child’s teacher?
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In China people think its rude to acknowledge someone in the service industry, like saying thank you to someone who has refilled your water glass, but its perfectly acceptable to accept a phone in the middle of a business meeting or worse in the middle of giving a lecture. I also find it rude when people are on the phone when paying for something for both cashier and customer.
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I think it’s incredibly disrespectful to text or answer your cell phone or even check your iPhone DURING A WORK MEETING. I can’t believe how many people do this, and my boss does it during one-on-one meetings so often that I think I might have to say something.
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I hate when people under 30 text me instead of call. And I hate it when people over 30 call me instead of text. I guess I just hate it when people act their age.
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The person in line at Chipotle, ordering an extremely complicated burrito for the someone on the other end of the cell phone conversation. Get the order, write it down, and then get in line. Reading the menu to them over the phone while we all wait is cause for a mob attack.
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It drives me nuts when people are going through order or checkout lines and still on their phones. Complications from not paying full attention aside, is it too much to ask to give the person taking your order/ringing up your purchase a polite hello?!
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I can’t stand “text-ease” spelling. I understand typos, but adults shouldn’t be using words like “cuz” and “pleez.”
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Honestly, my response to this probably changes with my mood, and what has happened during the day. I guess ’cause overall, it seems that so many people give their smart phones as much (or more) respect than they give to real live people . . . That said, today, I am still really peeved about people who take and make calls from a public restroom. Really? Not only rude to the person that you’re talking to, but equally rude to anyone using the restroom who would prefer not to share their biological functions with the person on the other end of your phone!
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