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!
With Nokia E71, you have a nice option to send predefined SMS
with single click in case like that;
1- open “Tools” –>”Setting”–>”Phone”–>”Call”–>scroll to:
set “Reject call with SMS” value = Yes
“Message Test” value = “Sorry, I’m not available now,will call back”
or other text that you like.
exit it to main screen.
From now, when you receive a call,the right bottom will by “Silence”, if you will click it it will change to “Send massage”.
I like the Nokia solution, above.
Another option is to tell your meeting partner at the beginning of the meeting that you are expecting a call from the president of the United States (or your spouse, or a colleague on the road, as the case may be), and apologize in advance for having to keep an eye on the display. This way, you get to leave the phone on and glance at it once in a while. If no urgent calls come in, you can express relief that your meeting wasn’t interrupted. If you get a call you want to take (expected, urgent, or not), you have an excuse to answer it.
I think that after the first interruption, the phone should be turned off or silenced and put away; if this isn’t possible, then some explanation should be offered for why it is being left on. Two “unwelcome” interruptions are too many.
If you want to make an impression, what about pausing the meeting briefly at the very beginning to make a show of turning off or putting away your phone — it might just prompt your meeting partner to do the same.
I guess the follow-up question is what do you do when the other person takes a call at a one-on-one meeting? Pretend not to listen? Walk away from the table on some pretext or another? Check your messages or make a call yourself?