Cell phone sins: six no-nos when you're doing business on a mobile phone - Communications - Technology Information

Home Office Computing, Sept, 1997 by Douglas Gantenbein

The audience of Troupe America, a Minneapolis theater group, was leaning forward in their seats in anticipation of a key scene in On Golden Pond. As a thespian enacted a heart attack onstage, a woman in the 1,200-seat theater reached for her handbag and pulled out...a ringing cellular phone. As the audience (and no doubt cast) looked on in stunned silence, the woman answered the call and took an order for cosmetics. Anecdotes such as this are causing the electronic equivalent of "road rage" -- call it "cellular simmer."

Few people would argue that cellular phones help their lives, but nearly everyone's got a list of annoying cell habits. Taking calls in a restaurant, for instance. "I was eating at Joe's Stone Crabs in Miami a while ago," says Kitty Graham, marketing director for Seattle-based backpacking equipment maker Cascade Designs, "and it seemed like everyone there had a cellular phone." Say the wrong thing in the wrong place, and you may even alienate a prospective customer. To prevent you from making business blunders, here are six sins to avoid.

Sin #1: Interrupting others with your ring. Many cellular phones have a silent mode that alerts users to a call by vibrating. The Nokia Vibrating Battery (800-666-5553, www.nokia.com; model BBT-1XV, $99) actually works with several of Nokia's cell phones, including the 450 unit that's available from PCS provider Omnipoint. Silent mode makes your calls less disruptive.

Sin #2: Driving and talking. Drivers talking on their cellular phones are more likely to crash than their non-yakking counterparts. And hands-off gadgets don't help -- it's the conversation, not the button pushing, that makes mobile motormouths crash-prone. So if you must talk while driving, pull over.

Sin #3: Exposing your personal life to others. Do you really think people want to know about your uncooperative client, your teenage daughter's latest nose ring, or your vexing gall bladder problems? Probably not. So if you must take or make a call in an airport, hotel lobby, or other public place, find a quiet comer in which to converse.

Sin #4: Picking up calls midconversation. Let's say you're in a client's office. You meant to forward calls to your answering service, but you forgot. Sure enough, your pesky phone rings. Don't simply react and pick it up automatically. Instead, ask your host if you may take a call. It's highly unlikely that he'll say, "No, you rude boob." He'll probably say yes and feel better about you for asking first.

Sin #5: Using cell phones for important calls. Cell phones have improved greatly in call quality, but they still can't match a corded telephone. For detailed conversations and tricky negotiations, pick up an old-fashioned telephone. Save the cell for urgent calls, requests for directions, or rearranging schedules on the fly.

Sin #6: Dragging work into fun. Walter Goldstein, a marketing consultant in Bozeman, Montana, increasingly finds his golf game distracted by cell phones. "You're trying to get away from things and this breaks the spell," he says. "Sure, phone companies promote the idea that you can take a call or get a fax anywhere, but is that really necessary?" Even if you have important business to conduct, don't let your work interfere with other people's relaxation.

Judith Martin, in her new book Miss Manners' Basic Training: Communications (Crown Publishers), reminds us that a spiffy Motorola StarTac phone is still just an ordinary Princess phone with better wiring. You must follow basic phone etiquette. Some things should never be handled over either type of telephone, including such messages as "Brendan and I are divorcing by mutual agreement."

On the other hand, a message like "Congratulations on that Nobel Prize!" is perfectly suited to cellular phones. Maybe the people next to you, trying to pick the crab shell out of the comer of their eyes, won't even mind.