Manners 3.0: Will someone please listen to me

Will someone please look me in the eye.  I'm in a restaurant with a friend and as soon as I go to the loo, he pulls out his phone and starts working.  Really?  Am I so boring that he can't take a lunch break from his job? (Or am I that slow in the loo?)

I once saw a photo on social media and wish I'd save it - a young couple sitting on a bench bent over their devices.  The skipper said, "I bet they're tweeting each other." He probably was right.

Remember when everyone didn't have a phone connected to everything they had an account on?  Frankly, newbies have not idea how to turn this stuff off.  They get rings on every phone call, music on every email, dings on every tweet, and lord knows what on every Facebook update.

But when I am having lunch with you, you better turn that sh*t off, because I will never have lunch with you again if you don't!

Simple solutions: Learn how to use your phone.  Most phones allow you to set your phone "ring" for special people.   They also allow you to set your phone to "SILENT" mode, with maybe a "vibrate" instead of a ring.  If you MUST get all your calls while having lunch. 

Same thing with email notifications. For G*d sake please turn these off. (Or use the silent mode)  No one needs to get a "sound" notification that you received yet another spam email in the middle of a golf game. Really!

This also applies to almost every social media app. They don't even warn you when you install them that they annoy the h*ll out out of everyone you are with when ANY new post or notification arrives. Really?

The bottom line is that people should learn how their phone works and turn off all those notifications.  You friends, fellow workers and family will appreciate it.

Note to newbies: Ringing phones and musical notifications don't tell your friends you are popular. They tell your friends you are an a**hole-newbie.