@bklynchic, did your mother say anything about having a sense of humor? (And did you see my little smiley-face goofy freakin’ “emoticons?” I was clearly not being all that serious, as evidenced by the trouble I took to…clearly convey same.) You seem a little thin-skinned to be playing with the other kids out in the wilds of the innernets….

Co-workers and clients don’t just expect you to respond quickly when there’s an “emergency” or when they’ve given prior notice that your intervention will be required in the off-hours. They expect it always, often at surprising times. To give you an example, this summer an important matter arose in the middle of 4th of July weekend. There was no indication that it would be an issue when we all left the office for the holiday. Therefore, every message needs to be checked and prioritized ALWAYS.

That’s what I’m talking about and that’s what you hadn’t covered.

That’s annoying and distracting. Period. And unnecessary.”

Wow, I’m glad I’m not that popular/busy. Yikes. I would go nuts.
I do think that a quick “is this urgent” glance is not too unreasonable in many situations (out with a group socializing), though it may be questionable in some situations (socializing with a single friend or talking with a coworker casually) and downright rude in others (talking with the boss, discussing work with a coworker, in deep discussion with a friend.)

It’s all about context, and it’s all about moderation.

More in line with the post:
I’ve got special ringtones assigned for certain people who would need to contact me in an emergency (spouse, parents, petsitter). If I’m busy and it’s a special ringtone, I’ll be sure to answer it if doing so wouldn’t be a problem/danger (on road, in shower) or be super-rude (talking business with the boss), even if I have say “I’m at work, can this wait?” Everybody else? I hit the button to mute the ringer and they can leave a message if it’s important. And it works pretty well.

However, while your post concerned ways that you can stop checking your phone because it’s getting in the way of living a fully realized life, many of the subsequent comments concerned how annoying they thought it was when other people checked their phones in public. Which, I can totally understand – everyone has their pet-peeves, and I’m not going to get in the way of someone’s venting! I just wanted to point out that, if you are a person who has to frequently check their phone for work (or, if you’ve set up a way for your phone to signal that there is an important work message, you have to respond immediately when those messages come in) sometimes its worth communicating that to the person you are with. And, if you are with someone that needs to check their phone for work, its nice to try to have some understanding about their situation. That way, hurt feelings can be avoided on both sides, and people who are out to dinner together can spend more time eating, and less time seething about phone-related slights. Makes for a more enjoyable dinner!

And, yes, lawyers have feelings too…and there’s a hell of a lot more to being a lawyer than “getting offended for a living.” Also – Seriously? Lawyer jokes? You can’t come up with anything better? I may check my blackberry in public, but I am polite enough to remember what my mother taught me – if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

I’m assuming if you have the type of 24/7 job that requires constant communication with your boss, the people you know and love (or even just the people you eat dinner with) know about it. Checking email from your boss is not the same as checking facebook. One says that you have work commitments you can not escape, the other says you have no respect for the person sitting across from you.

A person who has to keep an eye on their blackberry for work reasons could just mention to the other person (should they not know) that they need to be on alert for work, and they are sorry if this makes them seem a bit distracted at times. The other person could then have enough compassion to not to take it as a personal insult that their dinner partner needs to check their phone occasionally.

Politeness isn’t about living up to some abstract notion of how things should be done. It’s about making sure that the people around you are comfortable in your presence. Personally, I’d take someone who makes it a point to try to look at things from my perspective and understand where I am coming from over Ms. Manners any day.

Congrats to you that you can tolerate that. That’s part of why I am not in litigation today, despite the obvious pay perks. I realized when I was “on call 24/7″ that there was an awful lot I was missing. But if that doesn’t bother you, then by all means continue tolling billables while shackled to the Soul Eaters.

Meanwhile, out here in “magical unicorn land” (where most normal jobs are), we’ll enjoy the fact that work is OVER at 5pm and we can ignore the boss until the next morning. And you know what? Putting down the smartphone is one of the things I enjoy most at the end of every workday. I’ll think about your post and enjoy it even more from now on.

I’m an attorney, and I’m expected to be on call 24/7. If a partner at my firm emailed me, and I didn’t get back to him within 5 minutes on an urgent matter, he would call. And if I didn’t pick that up, I’d be severely reprimanded. More than once, and I’d likely be fired.

Many of my friends are also lawyers, investment bankers and people in other professional, high-demand careers where you’re expected to get back to people right away.

So if you live in magical unicorn land where your job is not 24/7: great for you. The rest of us have to get back our boss about something.

This is definitely clutter in my life! It’s a rare email in my personal account that can’t wait for an hour or two, so I need to break the habit and focus on better uses of my time.