Now that we live in a reality where we’re interrupted by a cellphone call a few times every hour, it is inevitable that people ring us even while we’re in an important business meeting. The question becomes, then, how do we react to the ring while remaining polite?
This was not a problem back in that ancient era – say, 25 years ago – when business people had something called an office, which had a door, and a secretary that could be asked not to transfer calls. But today we meet in coffee shops as often as in walled rooms, and secretaries are a rare breed. We need to decide what to do about interfering calls – which, of course, may involve important business in themselves.
There are many strategies to choose from:
- We can turn the phone off.
- We can leave it on but switch it to its Silent (“vibrate”) profile; then we can take a peek at the caller ID when we sense it coming to life and ignore the call unless it’s vital.
- We can let it ring audibly, taking a peek at the caller’s ID and hitting “reject” unless it’s vital.
- We can take one or two calls early in our meeting, and then turn it off or make it Silent.
- We can answer select calls, apologizing to the person we’re meeting with “Pardon, but this is important”, or “this is X, excuse me but I must take it” (where X is the wife, the kid’s kindergarten teacher, or the president of the United States – whoever we deem is unquestionably deserving in the other’s eyes).
- We can answer every single call, without so much as an apology.
So which strategy is best from an etiquette perspective? There is no one right answer. Sure, ideally you’d take option 1; after all, the caller will then leave a voice mail or Text you. But in the real world we juggle so many responsibilities that we may have a valid need to be reachable in case of a real emergency. The last option on the list is utterly rude, however many people adopt it. This leaves the middle four, which all combine a degree of screening with use of various degrees of silencing.
To my mind, what really matters is the perception of the person you’re with. Take option 4: the act of firmly turning the phone off after it rang a few calls says “Oh, this is really too much; my conversation with you is more important to me than these other people that are calling me“. In a sense it transmits a friendlier message than just coming to the meeting with the phone already off. Similarly, answering only calls from your wife (or the president) – and making sure to point out the caller – makes the other guy feel that maybe he’s not as dear to you as your spouse, but he’s is still above everyone else. It feels good.
I guess what this goes to is differentiation: you don’t answer the infernal device indiscriminately – you make it clear to the other person that some calls must come through, but only the really important ones you can’t defer; the rest you visibly reject because you have respect for your real life conversation and its participants.
As has been often remarked… it’s the thought that counts!
