Whether you are aware of it or not (and for most people I am guessing not) July has been deemed wireless etiquette month by none other than Jacqueline Whitmore. That’s right, Jacqueline Whitmore.
And what you may ask gives Jacqueline Whitmore the right to declare the seventh month of the year as wireless etiquette month? Well, she is the founder and director of The Protocol School of Palm Beach. If that’s not enough to grant her the ability to give a cause a month, I don’t know what is.
While the fact that an entire month has been set aside to celebrate—if that’s what we are supposed to do—wireless etiquette is a bit absurd, the thought is in the right place. I’m sure we all have had numerous experiences where a fellow cell-phone user was in desperate need of a little wireless etiquette education, which I typically think should involve some form of public flogging, but that’s just me and I may be a little bitter in having my birthday overshadowed by our emphasis on wireless etiquette.
Enough with the jibber-jabber; bring on the funny numbers.
Sprint Nextel Corp., which just so happened to have launched a wireless etiquette podcast last week, noted that a 2004 study found that 80 percent of respondents polled said that wireless users had become less courteous, but that 97 percent of those asked said they were not part of the problem.
Now, I’m no math wiz, but those numbers don’t seem to add up. If nearly everyone thinks they are not the problem, than were does the 80-percent problem originate? It must be because of that pesky 3 percent of respondents who admitted to being the problem are very active in rankling the other 97 percent of cell-phone users around the country.
It’s also interesting that Sprint Nextel released news about wireless etiquette month as it seems—from my own observations—that the No. 3 carrier’s customers are often the worst offenders. Specifically, those customers using the carrier’s iDEN-based Direct Connect, sorry, Walkie-Talkie service like they were in grade school. There is nothing funnier than hearing an exchange of “Now where are you?” with a speakerphone turned up to 11 for all to hear. And by funny I mean not funny.
Instead of reminding the rest of us about wireless etiquette, Sprint Nextel should be forced to show customers with an iDEN phone how to turn off the speakerphone and just talk into the handset like a regular phone call.
Of course, if everyone was courteous on their cell phones, we wouldn’t be fortunate enough to have a whole month dedicated to such a worthy cause.
