Don't be a Ding-aLing - the New Etiquette of Phones

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Phone etiquette. Remember what it was when we were kids? You answer, “Hello, Fleming residence,” and if the caller didn’t identify themselves, “May I ask who’s calling?” That was pretty much it for rules, because you just didn’t have many options. (When my dad added the brand new call-waiting service in 1978 because he was tired of the line being eternally tied up by two teenage daughters, we added another rule: when someone ‘beeped’ through, you had to get off your call and answer the next one. I think in modern terms we’d say it was a push notification service.

Now? Don’t get me started. The Washington Post and the Cut (part of The New Yorker) both recently published articles on modern phone rules. I thought I’d share some to see what you all thought.

At Home

Don’t leave a voicemail (except for bffs and fam who are always happy to hear your voice.) J: This is the one that exploded all over social media, particularly among those of us of a certain age. 

Text before calling, but no cryptic messages, ie, “We have to talk,” or “Call me now.” If there’s a specific issue you need to discuss, lay it out in the text. J: Not gonna lie, I love this. I love text because I can get back to you when it’s convenient; nowadays, an unexpected phone call feels like an intrusion. (If you’re a friend reading this, I don’t mean you.)

You don’t need to answer the phone when it rings! J: Which kind of brings up back to the answering machine days?

It’s ok to email, text or dm anyone at any hour. It’s on the recipient to manage their notifications.  J: I turn my phone off when I go to sleep, and set it on DND when I’m working.

In Public

Shine your phone flashlight discreetly in restaurants. J: I 100% agree with this. But also, restaurants, how about giving us enough light to read the damn menu? And can you turn down the music? And get off my lawn?

If you have to talk (or check something) excuse yourself from the table. Don’t start scrolling while at the table.  J: Also agree 100%.

No speakerphone convos in public. And for those of us who can only make it for about three months before losing airpod-like headphones, rejoice: plug in earbuds are back in style! J: I would also add, keep your voice down on your end while in public - unlike me. I was traveling recently, and at the airport, Youngest pointed out I used the same volume talking on my phone as I did when I was alone in my house. Ooops.

Face up and away from your phone while crossing the street. J: I’d add “And while walking in the city.” If you need entertainment from 5th Avenue to east 50th, play a podcast. With those attached earbuds! 

Friends and Family

Juicy gossip? Spilling the tea about a work incident? Always call, never text. J: This advice is approved by lawyers as well as etiquette experts.

Don’t share texts without permission. J: No screenshots, either!

Don’t text-bomb your friends! Group chats are the place for rapid-fire texting. 

Emergency? Let them know right away, don’t keep calling and texting hoping to break through. J: This feels like the one most likely to come from those of us who grew up even before answering machines, when the only way to connect was to ring and ring and ring. I remember being halfway across New York state, coming home from an audition to get into SUNY Purchase (no, I didn’t get an offer) and discovering I had lost my bus ticket. Trying to call and call from the bus station pay phone… shivers just remembering! I’ll take the modern mobile network anyday…

How about you, Reds? Anything here ring a bell?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I saw that article! SO fascinating. I can tell you, working at Channel 7, the “youngsters” absolutely would not make phone calls. Communication was via text, and email if absolutely necessary.

I’d say–just CALL the person! Call them!

That rant over, let me say I adore texting, it’s fast and semi-efficient.

Phone calls are SO efficient, especially when you make a plan via text to talk. 

But I will admit I don’t wanna answer the phone if I don’t want to. So don’t call, and then if I don’t answer, text and email to FORCE me to respond.

Hmm..”it’s on the recipient to manage their notifications.” Hmm. Sometimes I write the email on Saturday, and set it to send on Monday during working hours.

 Do we ALWAYS have to be available? NO. Do we have to assume that everyone else is always available? No.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the new methods of communication have retrained people to expect an immediate response.  It’s sender-centered, not receiver-centered. That’s why good ol’ answering machines were so convenient. 

RHYS BOWEN:  The new phone etiquette or lack thereof drives me crazy. If I’m talking to you I don’t expect you to pull out your phone, stare at the message and decide whether it’s more important than me at this moment . I do text a lot and like the convenience of texts but I agree with Hank that the younger generation never actually speaks. They text in abbreviated slivers, never a whole grammatical sentence. They must completely lack social skills. When I was growing up we were educated in the art of conversation!

Texts any time of the day or night? Not if I have a notification that pings! I get so many texts from political candidates it makes me decide never to donate again!

As for those who answer their phones on public transport and talk loudly, I call that justifiable homicide.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: When I was a kid our phone was a business line (my parents ran their business from home,) so you bet you had to answer properly, even in off hours. After many teenage-year fights, my parents gave in and got me a separate line. Remember those??

I put my phone on DND at night. Spam calls come in at all hours!, but even so, I don’t think people should text you in the middle of night. Email is fine, though. I have voice to text on my phone so almost never actually listen to voicemail, oops.

And can I just say that smart watches are now just as bad as smart phones for distracting people’s attention from real live conversations?

 

 

 

 

JULIA: How about you, dear readers? What do you think about the new rules for telephoning? 

"I've Got Some Advice For You..."

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I was ridiculously excited when I went onto The Washington Post to find they had added not one, not two, but four new advice columnists to an already stellar line up of Carolyn Hax, Ask Amy, and Miss Manners. 

 

Here’s where I out myself - I love advice columns. It’s the first place I go to in any daily, and I have to say WaPo is leading the pack. You have to appreciate a national paper that knows the news is SO exhausting, some times you just want to read about people getting dissed by their mothers-in-law or dealing with that jerk in the office who microwaves fish.

I got hooked on my habit with Ann Landers, of course. I remember both my mother and her mother had multiple yellowing clippings of Ann’s sage advice, stuffed into cookbooks, slid into drawers and pinned to the fridge with magnets. Honestly, A Kenmore without a picture of that smiling, helmet-haired woman seems a little bare.

But times, and hairstyles, have changed, so it’s extremely cool the Post is going for a young, diverse line-up of advice givers. I mean, I love Amy Dickenson (and we had a delightful lunch together at the Orange County Women’s Literary festival a few years back.) But she’s my age, and there are many more types of people in the US than middle class white ladies. 

 

Reds, do you turn to the advice page in your local paper? How about one of those online-only ones, like Dear Prudence in Slate or Ask a Manager? And if you do, can we get away with it by claiming it’s research into possible characters?

LUCY BURDETTE: I do love advice columns, of course! Though my poor advice columnist character Dr. Rebecca Butterman never managed to get the light-as-air tone that the more successful ones have adopted. And don’t tell him this, but I think the guy who does the column in the NYTimes Style section on Sunday is a little meaner than he needs to be. I think you can give people advice and gently tell them they’re acting like idiots without saying it exactly that way. 

 

Though now I suppose I have to confess…I did write to him some years ago and my question showed up in the Times. This was when I truly could not eat food with salt in it and my question had to do with whether a host should accommodate this. (It honestly wasn’t a preference but a medical condition.) He essentially told me to buck up, I probably wasn’t going to starve if I missed one meal:).

I do enjoy reading the questions and figuring out what my advice would be before I read the answers.

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Totally love them. Carolyn, of course, and Miss Manners, and the brilliant Meredith Goldstein in the Boston Globe. LOVE THEM.  And The Ethicist in the Times.  OH, yes. But let me say, the other day I ..well, let me ask you.

 

Quick synopsis: Wedding attendee, daughter a friend of the bride. Wedding dinner, very fancy in a hotel. Wedding dinner also VERY elaborate and portions super-generous. After the dinner, our letter-writer asks for a doggie bag to take home the massive leftovers from their own dinner. The waiter instantly appears with a box, but their dinner tablemates, relatives of the bride, are visibly and vocally astonished and critical. 

 

In addition, the attendee’s daughter, friend of the bride, and invited, but pregnant and confined to bed, had asked her parents to bring her a piece of cake,  so they asked for that. And got it.

 

At this point, the relatives of the bride go nuts. They report the food transgressions to the bride’s parents, loudly calling the letter-writers “bumpkins” and the like.

 

In embarrassment and humiliation, the letter-writers leave their boxed food  and piece of cake and head for the door.

 

The letter writers are asking–should they apologize?

 

I will leave it to you, reds and readers.

And yes, Julia, DEFINITELY RESEARCH. 

JENN McKINLAY: Hank I think you have veered off into a delicious favorite of mine called AITA (Am I the A$$hole?) which is a forum on reddit. In this case, I have to say the snooty relations of the bride are the sphincters! Who cares if someone boxes their food? In a world where people are literally starving to death isn’t it nice that they aren’t being grossly wasteful? My middle class upbringing has spoken. LOL. 

I’m a huge fan of Carolyn Hax and remember the grown-ups talking about the columns of Ann Landers and Dear Abby - they were related weren’t they? Was there a scandal there? Anyway, I love to read all of these columns because they certainly give an author material, don’t they? 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I start the day with the columns in the Dallas Morning News over breakfast! Abby, Carolyn, and Miss Manners. I did a panel at a literary festival a few years ago with Judith Martin and she was a hoot! Funny and quite sharp, as you would expect. I wonder if there are any writers who DON’T read advice columns…although often people’s situations are so awful or bizarre that no one would believe them if you put them in a book…

I’m with Jenn on the bride’s horrible relatives. Sounds like the Bridezilla bug must have been contagious!

HALLIE EPHRON: I’m addicted, I confess, to ALL the advice columns that appear in the Boston Globe, NY Times and Washington Post. Which is to say a ton of them. They’re part of my morning exercise to read and either sigh in agreement or snort in derision. Yay Miss Manners, still terrific. And Carolyn Hax. Purveyors of so much good sense. Such fresh air in a world where craziness seems to have no bounds.

The other thing I love to read when I can find it: THE HUNT. In the NY Times. It’s about house- or apartment-hunting usually in the NYC area. I love to ride along vicariously and thank my lucky stars that I bought my house ages ago.

 

RHYS BOWEN: Here’s something you didn’t know about me: back in the nineteen nineties when the internet was young, I was the Love Guru for I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter.  Remember their big campaign with Fabio? (Although why non-butter should be sexy I’ve never understood) but I was asked to write an online romance for their new website. It was so popular that I was then asked to be their Love Guru. So for about a year I answered agony aunt questions. So many of them about a man I’ve met on the internet and I’ve fallen in love with him etc. There ended up being so many questions that I farmed some out to my daughter Anne, who turned out to be really good at this (and has proved it by becoming a psychotherapist).

 

I always felt Ann Landers was good and sensible, but I don’t make a point of reading such columns any longer. But Jenn–AITA. Hooked on that.

 

JULIA: Hands raised, all of you who didn't see Rhys as the Love Guru or that she reads Am I The A$$h@le! Dear readers, do you love advice columns as much as we do? Do you remember any particularly juicy stories?