Internet Frustrations

Dear Reader,

I would never have thought that it would take me over a week to make my second post. I have been unable to get on the internet because of our horrible connection. How frustrating! I had just gotten up my nerve to start my blog last week -- and then I wasn't able to do anything to it.

Needless to say, I've used some choice, colorful words about our internet connection -- words that I blush to say should not appear anywhere near a Good Manners Mom Blog! (Now, if I'd called it the Bad Manners Mom Blog ...)

We received all of the technology to switch our provider today and I hope that I will now be able to start blogging (and learning exactly how to blog) a little more regularly!

Because this is my manners blog, I thought I'd better leave you tonight with one etiquette observation about our phone-obsessed world:
We are so attuned to immediate phone gratification -- as soon as we hear it ring, our eyes turn right to the phone to see who is calling or texting. Because we can be in touch, we have to be in touch. Stopping a conversation at work or dinner to see who is calling (and to then respond) is telling our companion that his or her presence isn't important to us.

Yes, I know that there could be an important call coming through -- a child's school or a client's call -- and I'm as guilty as you are of checking to see who is calling. But yesterday at work it struck me how rude I was being. So in the afternoon, I physically forced myself not to look at either my work phone or cell phone when it rang. And, you know what? The messages were just fine for having waited 20 minutes to be heard and then answered. (To parents out there, I admit that my older daughter doesn't buy this -- but maybe she'll absorb it through observing my stellar example.)

Today, though, I was expecting a call from my younger daughter's teacher. We've been playing phone tag and I really needed to speak to the teacher in person. So right at the start of my meeting I apologized in advance in case I needed to take the call. It felt better to handle it that way to me. What do you think?

Well, that certainly wasn't fun or entertaining! I need to lighten things up.
I'll tell you what I really think is obnoxious -- when people leave their blackberries next to the phone so that when you are on the phone with him or her and a call/text comes through on his or her blackberry, the static interupts our call. And then that person has to say, "Oh, sorry, my blackberry."

That's just rude on so many levels -- move your (words a good manners mom shouldn't use) blackberry, for goodness sake! You suspect he or she put it there so that you are made aware that he or she has important blackberry business (in case you had any doubt of his or her importance.)

Phew. Maybe tomorrow I'll talk about ATM etiquette. Or not.

Blog you soon.

Leslie
www.goodmannerskidsstuff.com