Get your elbows off the table – Emily Post is just jealous of your Smartphone

A few weeks ago, I was at this meeting sitting in a fancy boardroom. Even if you’re unemployed it doesn’t mean you aren’t attending meetings in the financial district on occasion. It’s another one of my methods for staving off boredom. I forget to turn my cell phone to vibrate a lot of the time; I am the person who needs that reminder before the movie. However, this time I decided to be pro-active and turn the ringer off for this meeting.

I am a firm believer that a Smartphone is really more of a business machine. For the most part, I imagine, most people don’t need to open PowerPoint presentations on a daily basis and be honest, your personal email consists of mailing lists you subscribe to and other assorted spam. I don’t have a BlackBerry, honestly I tried but those things are expensive even on a third year data plan (and I think the Pearl is stupid because it isn’t a full QWERTY keyboard) and at present I don’t have a company supporting my bbm habit. So I am a girl of the flip phone, but honestly I can T9 faster than an 11 year old. That’s an accomplishment.

During this meeting people took their iPhones and BBs out for different reasons. At one point Twitter was mentioned and someone just “had to” see what this particular tweeter was all about. Another time someone had to check their Outlook calendar to see if a date was conflicting. Whatever the reason, their phones stayed in their hands through the duration of the meeting and it was clear to see their attention waning. It is socially acceptable because they have Berries or iPhones. It is possible that they could be looking at business-related work. And for once, I’m going to give people the benefit of the doubt, I know a lot of people have to answer work emails outside of business hours, that’s why they shackle those phones to you. Availability 24/7, right? But what irks me is that people are permitted to communicate via bb or iPhone during a meeting because it could be under the guise of work-related matters, however if I pull out my archaic flip phone you immediately know I’m making some kind of outside social call, which is then utterly unacceptable.

Smartphones are popping up on tables everywhere including dinner tables. Growing up we all learned not to put our elbows on the table, so why do we put so much else on the table? At my house we never took calls during dinner, that time was for family, even if we have nothing to say to each other and just watch each other’s jowls open and shut while eating. It still goes that way in my family, but when I’m out with friends it takes a different spin. How many times do you sit at a restaurant with your friends and each of you has your phone on the table? It’s almost instantaneous: you sit down and you put your phone on the table. It’s like a pissing contest; we all whip it out as if to see whose is bigger/better?

Maybe we never grow up; maybe we all need security blankets, now they’re just security phones. I once stood in the lobby of First Canadian Place waiting for a friend to get off work and a man walked off the elevator and was waiting for someone too. It took three seconds of nervous uncomfortable fidgeting for him to take out his bb and start tapping away. What was most interesting was the sense of relief it seemed to provide to him. Maybe I read too much into these things, it’s probably because I have so much time on my hands to people watch because I don’t have a BlackBerry, so maybe I’m just jealous. Maybe we’re attached to yet another object the way we were to a blankie, except these days there’s no one to wean you off of it. Imagine being attached to your ba-ba in public now, what would Emily say?