Perhaps We’re A Little Too Connected?
If you were to sit down in a course at a neighborhood college you would see a very attention-grabbing trend. You may also see it at your job, at board meetings; eating at production. I notice it all the time and actually actively participate.
I’m talking, naturally, regarding the use of PDAs and additional personal electronic devices to check things such as text messages, emails, and even Facebook.
This has become one of the most recent forms of office protocol faux pas. Workers are now spending less time focused at meetings and more time with their phones and PDAs. It has become so out of hand that some businesses have begun to protest about people using their handsets in the workplace.
As far as university goes, there is not anything more annoying than being in the middle of a test and someone’s phone goes off. On the other hand, if you’re listening to a talk and checking your email or distributing texts, I don’t see too much immoral with it only if you’re not being distracting to those around you. If you’re sitting in lecture and you’re in a group that expects you to do work, however, there is a serious issue if you’re spending all your time checking your email. This is where it becomes an issue in the workplace.
If you’re at a meeting and your team member is at the same meeting, or worse, at a meeting where he or she was supposed to get information for the group, and is continuously checking his or her handset, then what did he or she truly retain from the meeting? It causes a cessation in transmission because they could have missed a extremely important part of that lecture. As well, when people are doing extra than one thing at once, such as attempting to listen to a meeting and reading emails and text messages, then they are less likely to retain the information, or they will retain bits and pieces of it.
A less important issue coming up against those who use their devices during meetings and at additional social functions could be making someone quite annoyed. If you have something very important to convey to an additional individual and all he or she expects to do is download emails then you’ll most likely end up irritated and angry. At a New York political coup, Tom Golisano said that he got quite angry when meeting with Democratic majority head Malcolm Smith, who Golisano frequently gives large campaign offerings to, spent more time on his Black Berry than to the problems he should have been working on.
There will likely be some workplace rules facing people soon once workplace rules catch up with technology and productivity will go back to average.
