Have you ever checked your Blackberry for new emails while on a date? Have you ever answered the phone while watching a movie in a theater? Chances are that most of us have been guilty of not practicing appropriate mobile etiquette from time to time, some worse than others. Intel recently sponsored a survey that concluded that mobile etiquette is not where it should be. At a time where mobile devices are getting more wide spread – netbooks let people take their media to places they might not have previously, it seems like people’s lack of mobile etiquette is getting worse and worse. Intel has provided us with a to give away – and the winner gets to choose whatever color they’d like. To enter to win the Dell Mini 12, email us your mobile etiquette horror story (or leave a comment) – whether it’s something your personally ashamed of having done, or another mobile etiquette incidence that you may have observed that really stuck with you.
LAST DAY TO ENTER IS JULY 21ST
And if you’re wondering how bad your own personal mobile manners just really is, take the mobile etiquette quiz on Facebook. You can also follow other mobile etiquette stories on Twitter using #mobilemanners.
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I observed a young boy in a movie theater who had earplugs connected to his mobile and the music was blasting away so that anyone within 1 meter or so could hear his music very clearly – great entertainment, except we were trying to watch a movie!!!
DT
So it was the first day of my Honors Intro History class during the spring semester of my freshman year. Obviously I had been through a whole semester of college, so I figured I had seen just about everything…or so I thought.
The class was a seminar/discussion-based course so there were only 9 people in the room including the teacher. She introduced herself and started to discuss the syllabus when a cell phone started to ring. To truly understand the hilarity of this situation, however, you need to understand who the cell phone belonged to. Meet Alice. Alice was a freshman, like me, but that is about where the similarities ended. Alice made a habit of chasing down the campus shuttle to get to class, throwing books at it until it stopped. Alice kept her cell phone in a fanny pack (which never left her person) with a 6 flags logo on the top. Alice had
“Who Let the Dog’s Out” as her ring tone.
Now I’ll admit, my cell phone went off at least twice during the perious semester so I understood that it could happen. And when it did, normal people would silence it quickly, turn bright red, and make profuse, quiet, humble apologies to everyone in the room. Alice was not a normal person. Alice rifled through her 6 flags fanny pack, got her cell phone, gave a cute smile to it, and answered.
The mood of the room was a mixture of confusion and amazement. The teacher quietly walked over to Alice and told her “Alice, you can’t take a phone call when we are in the middle of class…let alone while you are still in the cla” The sentence was cut off there by Alice’s finger, held up in front of her face while her lips mouthed “One minute” to a flabbergasted Ph.D.
Needless to say, Alice didn’t last very long in that class let alone the university’s Honors program. But she did take one more class with me (a psychology class, sans phone unfortunately) which was just as hilarious as the first (even without the phone). To this day, that story still gets everyone from my class cracking up. And I am so happy I got to witness it first hand!