Use Technology;

Don’t Let It Use You

RECENTLY AT THE GROCERY store, the woman behind me had a mere carton of juice, and I had a whole cart full of items, so I said, “Please, go in front of me.”

Did she even acknowledge this? She did not. Clearly she wasn’t deaf, because she did, indeed, walk in front of me. I was tempted to take back my offer.

A woman sitting next to me on an airplane asked for the in-flight magazine. I handed it over with a smile. She didn’t even look up or say anything at all. I was sorry I’d given it to her.

There should be a lot more thank-yous. I get irked every day when I hold the door for people and they don’t say thank you.

And I’m starting to think that a lot of times it has to do with people being so in their own worlds. You see people walking through the world staring at their BlackBerries or iPhones. Doors are opening for them. Change is being made. People are making way. But they don’t acknowledge it, because they’re on that thing.

On several flights I’ve been on, the flight attendants have reached a point of exasperation, saying, “We can’t leave until everything with an on/off button is turned off!” People aren’t even processing that because they’re so distracted by their gadgets. Or they’re thinking, “My BlackBerry isn’t going to take this plane down.”

How important could the messages be? Is your wife having a baby this second? And if so, why are you on the plane? If you’re on your way to her, how about just texting, “Be right there, honey,” and then turning off the phone?

This kind of technological distraction is everywhere. At Dunkin’ Donuts, the person behind the counter was saying, “Excuse me!” to the man who was first in line. He was on his phone, so he didn’t even notice. The counter person went to the second person in line, and then suddenly the first guy said, “Hey!”

“Ah, you’re out of your coma!” the person behind the counter said.

I feel like an old fart sometimes, but I wonder, Where does this take us? These sidewalks aren’t designed for zombies, nor are our highways.

I hear there is a new application for iPhones that lets you see the sidewalk behind the phone while you text. That to me seems like surrender. You can’t read e-mail while doing anything as complex as walking down a crowded sidewalk or driving on a highway.

It’s impossible for your brain to take in that much information, at least it certainly is for me. Once when I was on Todayin New York live via satellite from Los Angeles, I was looking directly into a camera that had Matt Lauer’s interview questions for me on the screen. Since the words that appeared weren’t mine, I wasn’t supposed to read them, but they were so terribly distracting that I couldn’t think straight. And all I had to do was chat. I didn’t have to navigate a crowd or traffic!

It may seem crazy to stress manners when it can be hard enough just keeping it together day to day. When I flip through old etiquette books from the fifties and sixties, I see why people think talking about manners is ridiculous. In one old book, you have proclamations like:

“Boy’s hands on wheel. Girl’s hands at her side.”

“Shorts are out of place on the street.”

“Don’t chew gum in church.”

“Follow your hostess in putting your napkin in your lap.”

“Choose congenial friends.” It’d be nice if you knew in advance!

And then there are all of the etiquette book particulars about table settings. Mrs. Post, I don’t even ownfish forks!

But real etiquette helps. Sometimes it’s practical, or it used to be. Traditionally, men walked on the outside of the sidewalk and women on the inside. I believe that goes back to the period in history when people threw their chamber pots from their windows onto the streets below. The person walking on the outside of the sidewalk would get hit, and better for it to be the man, who didn’t have petticoats to wash.

In general, when it comes to etiquette, I don’t care about all that fussy stuff regarding salad forks, but rather about the fundamentals of conscientious behavior. It’s good for you and those around you, and it’s good for preserving a social order that supports everyone. The key things are to be as thoughtful as possible of others and to pay attention to the messages you’re sending out, and the means by which you’re sending them.

When someone dies, it’s good to mail a note. Don’t send an e-mail. You have to send a card. Everyone should have cards and stamps kicking around. I have some very simple stationery, just nice card stock with my name at the top. You don’t have to write a long note. I learned something from Diana Vreeland: What you write should be pithy and memorable. All people need to know is that you’re thinking about them: “Thinking about you at this difficult time. I was so sorry to hear of your loss.” Done.

When the news is happy, e-mail is fine. You can e-mail congratulations about babies, weddings, anything. But when it’s not? If it’s a death or other bad news, you have to be more formal.

I wasn’t the only one who was a little horrified by Ashton Kutcher’s reference to his former girlfriend Brittany Murphy’s death. He wrote on Twitter: “2day the world lost a little piece of sunshine. My deepest condolences go out 2 Brittany’s family, her husband, & her amazing mother Sharon.”

People use texting and e-mail for everything, but it’s not appropriate for somber situations. If you win an Oscar, tweet away, but if you’re talking about a death or an illness, you need to use more formal channels. For example:

You can promote an employee via e-mail, but you can’t fire him.

You can ask someone out by e-mail, but you can’t break up with her.

Happy occasions can be casual. Sad or serious ones require a personal touch.

Fighting by e-mail is bad, too. I’m all for writing down the angry e-mail, but don’t send it. That carefully crafted note never has the effect you want it to have. It just inflames the situation. Print it out and then delete it. Then you have the reference for the phone call or the meeting. It will save you a lot of stress and conflict. Every time I’ve blown up in a moment of frustration I’ve regretted it.

The worst was a few years ago when I sent an angry e-mail late at night to a TV executive. He’d called to yell at me about something I’d said to the press. I took the high road at the time and was contrite on the phone. But then I stewed about it all night. I thought: How dare you?And I started thinking counterproductive things like: I could have said this much worse thing to the press!I wrote it all down in an e-mail and rather than just saving it and cooling off, I hit send.

The next morning, I woke up with one thought: I can’t believe I sent that.

I sent a new e-mail apologizing and called later and just said, “Sorry.”

It blew over, and I learned that many mistakes can be undone. But I thought, Never again.When you take into account the emotional wear and tear, you realize it’s better to let most sleeping dogs lie. I’ve learned at the age of fifty-seven that as much as I’d like to say X, Y, or Z, I must consider how I am going to feel afterward. And the answer, in the case of angry or snide remarks, is: not great.

I also learned about e-mail attachments the hard way. Someone sent me an e-mail when I was at Parsons with an attachment saying, “What kind of a jerk is this guy?” I wrote back, “He demonstrates every time he puts a word to paper that he’s a complete and total asshole.” I thought I was responding to her, but in fact I was responding to the guy. He had a good sense of humor about it, luckily, and wrote me back, saying, “I’ve been called worse.” I was mortified.