I once had a meeting with a satellite radio executive in the Faculty Club at USC when he pulled out not one but two phones and laid them on the table.

That’s before looking at a menu or starting a conversation.

Before sitting down.

Unfortunately the two phones turned out to be the default conversation.

He could see that I was discouraged and distracted so at one point he looked up and said, “What do you want me to do?”

I shot back, “Give me $15,000 for my student’s media project.”

He said okay and went back to the phones.

(I guess I shouldn’t complain but he was such an interesting person and yet I never got his full attention).

One of my friends told me he has a way to flush out people who refuse to stop looking at their phones when they are out to dinner.

He suggests they all put their phones face down in the middle of the table and the first one to check their phones before the meal ends up paying the check.

Stop sitting idly by when other’s rudely keep deviating from conversation to their digital devices.

I read an article recently where a teenage girl asked her father to dinner to talk to him.

But Dad couldn’t put the phone down even when she asked him to.

Finally she said, “I want to talk to you, dad, not your phone”.

So let me end with this well documented fact:  adults teach their children rude phone behavior.

How about setting a better example.

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