I was out of Colombo overnight on Friday (or should we say cut off from my life line?) and hadn't had a chance to charge my phone for over 24 hrs, and I realized for the first time how dependent I’ve become on my mobile phone and internet access to get information, to touch base with friends and the outside world, and for recreation (AKA Facebook!) I found myself running to my car to hook up my iPhone to the car charger cz my phone hardly had any juice left and it was dying on me! Oh no!!!!!
We are all 'connected' these days. If we choose to be — or perhaps if we fail to make an active choice — we’re potentially accessible around the clock aren’t we? Isn’t that a given?
But have you ever spent time with someone who interrupts your conversation to reflexively check incoming texts and emails or accept phone calls? It’s infuriating. Unless there’s a good reason for our close ones to put us on “hold” while they respond to a technological intrusion, it’s just plain rude behavior. And yet, even as I condemn that, I know I’ve been guilty now and then too.
Someone once said whilst on this topic that ‘If we accept texts, calls and emails regardless of what else we may be doing at the time, technology is using us rather than vice versa. We limit our enjoyment of our downtime by making ourselves too available’. – It got me thinking…
I was having a nice quiet evening chit-chatting having a drink with a close friend recently – I don’t think he even realized that it upset me when quite a few times our chat was interrupted by text beeps and once he was done replying he came back to our conversation and had completely forgotten what we were talking about! He was more engaged in a ‘text chat’ – yes that’s right ‘text-chat’ – you know when you reply back and forth and the phone keeps beeping every few seconds. I think it's rude and it is a constant annoying little interruption that gets in the way of quality conversation – don’t you think so?
Anyway – I’ve decided –next time that happens – I’m just going to get up and leave. If am asked where am going, I’ll just say "to look for someone who actually wants my company, that's where."
If it’s at my place, I’d just say "Clearly u have somewhere more important to be, U are free to leave whenever you like – the door is wide open." J
I’m Mean? – Those who know me well would know that “I” would never ever get around to saying/doing that! – am such chicken s%$t that way!! I’ve been asked to ‘grow a pair’ now and then – even though it won’t go with the rest of my anatomy.
The answer, of course, is to make a conscious decision on when to make ourselves available to others.
However, let’s not forget etiquette people! Well – I believe the norms on response time are:-
Emails – 24 hours! Come on – we are in a day and age where anyone who uses the internet will use it at a frequency of at least once a day (am sure there are some studies out there supporting this.) Anyway – it all in context – (perhaps work email response times won’t apply here!)
Texts – 6 hours max! – even if you are really busy – you are sure to take a pee break or a stretch break every 6 hours unless you are fast asleep after a very very hectic night having drunk copious amount of alochol or buried alive in a coffin, kidnapped or better yet - in a coma!
Missed calls – same rules apply as texts J Unless you have a toll free number and have had like a thousand missed calls – I see no reason why u can’t send a simple text saying you will call back at a particular time and asking if it’s anything urgent.
And on that note, here’s a link to Dilbert comic strip, which I think is a bit related to this post.
http://www.dilbert.com/2009-03-10/
My next post is actually going to be a list of my pet peeves or let’s just say 100 things that annoy me! –
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