Tell Hetrick

My daughter is learning to drive and is among the first generation forbidden to use handheld communication devices while operating a vehicle. The familiar bzzz announcing the arrival of a text creates an unspoken but undeniable panic in the car—a message she can’t instantly view or acknowledge. I find her anxiety irritating and immature.

Then I consider how often I sit surrounded by grownups and watch the same behavior, fingers and thumbs incapable of sitting still, drumming their way across BlackBerries and iPhones throughout meetings and presentations. The culprits clutch their devices low in the lap, preventing anyone with the point of view of, say, a springer spaniel, from seeing what they’re up to.

I wonder if they’d be equally inclined to hold up a sign stating, “You’re just not that important,” which is exactly what I think their behavior says to everyone in the room. I’m not talking about transplant surgeons waiting for word of an available kidney. I’m not spending time in the Oval Office. I’m talking about marketing people–the same ones who have email auto-replies announcing that they’re temporarily unavailable and offering plenty of options for “emergency” marketing assistance. Yet the buzz, the flash, the hypnotic little “1 new message” digital alert somehow drives otherwise intelligent people to put their professionalism, their manners and their judgment on a shelf, when instead, that’s exactly where their handhelds belong. Painful as it is at first, my daughter’s learning to ignore the call. Can you?