Mobile Phone Manners, Anyone?

If you’ve quietly fumed because the store clerk rang up your purchase while chatting on her mobile phone, never looking at you or making eye contact once while treating you as if you were a blob of donut jelly, chances are, you’re over 30. And mobile phone manners are only one of the conventions of etiquette to disappear into the mists of time.

You might notice that age polarization again, if you ever get into an argument over what constitutes good mobile phone manners. If you’re bemoaning modern rudeness, you’re most likely over 30. If you’re cheerfully insisting you can pay attention to a conversation with your miffed opponent while you’re texting at the same time, you’re probably a teen or early twentysomething. (And you’re texting while you’re arguing.)

I’ve heard good arguments and bad on both sides.

And I really don’t think the whole mobile phone manners issue has anything to do with mobile phones, at all.

It has to do with being self-centered, in the truest sense of the word.

It has to do with thinking we’re sophisticated and important, when we’re really just obnoxious.

(And usually loud.)

My grandmother taught me a thing or two about manners, back in those mists of time. I’ll admit I used to snigger, but one example keeps coming back to me, recently.

“You should be like the Queen,” she once said, amid our stifled giggles. “She knows good manners aren’t about knives and forks. They’re all about making the other person feel valued and comfortable.”

She then went on to tell us a story about Queen Elizabeth II entertaining some very “small” local dignitary aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia. The man picked up a spoon, and began to eat his salad with it, oblivious to the fact that HRH hadn’t yet even started eating. He was visibly nervous.

Did Queen Elizabeth get offended? We’ll never know. But what she did do was promptly pick up her spoon too, and began eating salad. (After a moment’s hesitation, everyone followed suit.)

I wasn’t very old, but I got the point.

So who are you making feel comfortable, when you hold a loud conversation in a library next to the ear of someone deep in study? Who are you impressing, when you ignore the clerk behind the counter and make her (and the rest of the line) wait while you shout into your mobile phone?

Thatís the crux of the matter. A large portion of teens and twenty-somethings nowadays will be surprised at the above questions. After all, don’t we know that our precious selves are the most important persons in the universe?

As for myself, I think that manners (or lack thereof) we assume when clutching a cell phone are all just part and parcel of 21st century people’s disconnection with real-live, flesh and blood human beings. We’re a schizophrenic society, having our deepest relationship with Bugaloo25 or Jade Rabbit on Twitter, while our spouses, moms, children or friends sit pouting right beside us, ignored.

Let’s bring back manners before we completely lose all ability to understand how monstrous we can be.

And if you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, let me give you some hints about what constitutes bad mobile manners…

1. Leaving your ringer on in church, weddings and movies
2. Talking loudly and interrupting the minister and the vows during said wedding
3. Talking loudly, period.
4. Texting while driving
5. Texting while already in the middle of a conversation with a real live human being
6. Bombarding people with really, really inane text messages because you’re bored, and You Can
7. Having ringtones that rip the air apart with Cannibal Corpse Meets Beethoven’s 9th Symphony
8. Tapping your foot and singing loudly along with Cannibal Corpse Meets Beethoven’s 9th Symphony
9. Sailing absent-mindedly through doors held open for you while absorbed in a mobile phone conversation (or bumping into people as if they’re road pylons, oblivious to their feelings and existence)
10. Holding loud conversations in restaurants (somehow I always seem to sit close to someone who does this, drowning out my dinner conversation.) Or maybe there are really just that many people who practice the “Stop, world! I am talking on my mobile!” shtick.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to do what I was taught to do, when confronted with people who have no idea their manners are truly atrocious:

Lie back, and think of England.

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