In person, including if I am in your cube at work, if you are in my cube, if we are driving together, walking together at the mall, visiting each other's home, etc.:
1. If your cell phone rings, you may glance at the incoming number and hit the "end" button; you may answer only in special circumstances, say if you are a parent and you see that your kid is calling, or if you are expecting someone to meet you, or if your job calls. In such a case, prior to answering the call, you must excuse yourself, provide me a brief explanation, and then make your call quick. You may certainly not blindly answer every call, interupting our time together.
2. No clever cell phone rings; vibrate, please, or a low-volume "old fashioned" ring, preferably only after vibrate has failed to alert you, followed by volume that increases, so that you get alerted with the minimum disturbance to the life around you.
- Clever ring: Non-stop blasting of "Afternoon Delight" or "I'm Coming Out"
- Old-fashioned ring: alternating between 2 second ring and 8 merciful seconds of silence.
3. You may not have any earphones engaged (cell phone or ipod) when you are conversing with me.
4. If I sneeze, DO NOT BLESS ME. If you want to bless me, instead of wasting my time "blessing" me and waiting for my "thank you" when I'm involutarily overcome by a sneeze, just honor my other rules.
On the phone with me:
1. If we are talking on the phone, if you get an incoming call, see Rule 1 above for talking to me in person. You may not interupt our discussion with every call that you receive.
2. If you place me on hold, I will count to 10, then hangup. If you call me back, see rule 3.
3. If you call me, I will not answer if I am speaking with another person, in person or on the phone; get in line. I'll attend my phone calls in the order that they're received. If I'm busy, I will not answer just to tell you that I'm busy; I'll hit the "end" button and call you when I have phone time.
4. I will tolerate no extensive voice greetings instructing me how to use voice mail, informing me of the number that I just dialed (which is displayed on my own phone), or telling me to have a nice or blessed day. When your voice greeting starts, I will press "1", and if that doesn't get me to a recorder, I will leave no message.
Have a blessed day!
5 comments:
Wow. Are you having a bad day?
I've had several experiances this week in people's cubes helping them with something, and their cell phone erupts, and they halt their interaction with me and turn full-attention to answering the incoming call indiscriminantly. From now on, I count to five, and I exit. People have also done this while visiting in my cube. From now on: 5 seconds, and I exit my own cube.
I know what you mean. I've got this putz across the wall from me who leaves his cell phone ringer turned all the way up and uses about the most abnoxious ringtone he could've picked. He'll walk away from his desk leaving his cell there and suddenly BOINGGGGG!!!!, the thing starts going off. I tell him about it all the time, but the dimwit doesn't get it.
Also, there's nothing worse than someone calling YOU and then asking YOU to hold on, becasue they've got another call coming in. ARRRGGGHHH!
And another thing. I've had iot with drivers talking on the phone. It's become a plague. I would be completely supportive of a law making it illegal. I'm not guilt free, either. I occasionally talk on the phone while I'm driving, but I honestly try to keep it to an absoluet minimum. But I would have no problem, none, in making talking on the phone while driving illegal.
I advocate talking on the phone while driving. I adamantly oppose laws against this. I consider myself to have a responsibility only to drive correctly, not to refrain from activities that you think will prevent me from driving correctly. Once we start banning cell-talking, should we also ban eating, etc.? If you don't crash into me, what business is it of mine what you're doing with your body?
For the most part, I confine my phone conversations to the one hour a day that I spend commuting (30 mins each way). Calls that I get in the evening at home, I tend to return during the next commute times, when I have nothing else to do other than transport myself while not crashing into anybody else.
Six: If we are driving together, I will not jabber away on the phone.
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