Has your dinner date ever been interrupted by an annoying cell phone ring tone indicating an income text message or phone call to the recipient? Proper etiquette is to silence your cell phone during a coffee or dinner date. Even if you are a parent with a babysitter on call, you can set your phone to vibrate. If you get an incoming, you can discreetly check or excuse yourself to the restroom to check on things.
Ring tones are permeating all social settings. The fact that ring tones are every where however, does not proper etiquette make. Children are doing their homework with blinking cell phones set out next to their notebooks. Hey beautiful, you’ve got a text message! High school children are constantly gathered together socializing with cell phones whipped out blinking and ringing. Drivers are talking on the phone risking not only a ticket but their lives and the lives of others.
A recent article in the associated press covered a news story about how a ring tone halted the New York Philharmonic performance. A ringing cell phone sound is an annoying dread at any performance, not just the movie. Tuesday night at the Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall the ring happened. It was at the end of Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. The conductor Alan Gilbert literally stopped the orchestra until the phone was silenced.
Usually an announcement is made before a performance telling an audience to silence or turn off their phone. If a device goes off, ushers will ask the owner to turn off the phone. This time, the conductor turned his head in displeasure but the iPhone kept ringing and ringing from the first row. Gilbert asked for the noise to be shut off and finally stopped the entire orchestra until the phone was silenced. It’s a lesson in social etiquette. When someone deserves your attention, make sure to silence your cell phone. You wouldn’t want to offend your date any more than you would the conductor of the Philharmonic.
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