I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that everyone is now text messaging. I know for me, I am hardly on the phone anymore. The phone was the one business tool that was glued to my ear for so many years and now, it’s texting on the iPhone… tweeting on the iPad… and emailing on the laptop…
Today, I went out to dinner with my daughter. We were sitting outside a lovely cafe eating Italian food when a family came over and sat at an adjacent table. The mother went to her purse and pulled out her Blackberry. The sons both did the same. As my daughter and I were enjoying our food having a nice conversation, the table across from us didn’t talk. They just texted.
“Look at that,” my daughter texted to me on my iPhone. “Could you believe that no one is talking?”
This scene wasn’t unusual for me because I see it all the time, especially in business.
Do you remember when cell phones became popular and you were eating lunch with a client, vendor or associate and his phone rang? He usually said excuse me and picked himself up and took the call. Sometimes he would even take the call while you were sitting next to him. That was really uncomfortable, right?
Today, I find that when I’m at a business lunch, the client, associate or vendor’s cell phone goes off and he picks it up to view the text message. Then, he responds. I don’t know which scenario is ruder?
In any event, now it’s not only at the business level, it’s at the family level too… What are you thoughts?
