Blue Helm

Posted by Chad Mustard on December 4th, 2009

Do you twitter or text in the middle of a meeting? Do you answer the phone on a date with your spouse? Do you even think about other people in public before you plug-in?

The other week I was in an important meeting where a government official was giving a presentation. He had just started and I was giving him my undivided attention when I was distracted by the guy sitting next to me. He had just pulled out his Blackberry and was typing away. I could easily see that he was tweeting something random. Not only was this guy distracting me, he wasn’t paying attention to the presentation. If this were an isolated incident I wouldn’t care, but it’s something I see almost every day. What has our constant connectivity done to our manners?

Are we so plugged-in now that we can’t be away from phones, Twitter, Facebook or any other communication device for even a few minutes?

Don’t get me wrong. I love smart phones, the internet, social media and all of the other things technology brings. In fact, I love technology so much I started a business that is totally focused around it. That being said, I don’t like how some people just can’t understand when it’s inappropriate to be using said technology.

There are plenty of articles that talk about cell phone or texting etiquette. These articles are great, but I want to make one thing clear: Texting or updating your Twitter account in the middle of a meeting, church, class, movie theater or any other similar venue is distracting and rude.

Don’t be like this guy—cell phone/texting/tweeting karma is real:

What do you think? Do you think it’s okay to text or tweet in settings I’ve mentioned? If so, I would love to hear from you.

Tags: Etiquette

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 10:30 am and is filed under Blue Helm, Branding, Social Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.