Restaurateurs must signal a sound policy regarding inconsiderate cell phone usage

Nation's Restaurant News,  Nov 19, 2007  by Paul Frumkin

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Cell phones. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

A recent article in The New York Times tells of a Maryland restaurateur who had come to the end of his telephonic tether concerning cell phone usage. Ironically, the story is not about some obtuse customer broadcasting his personal business across a hushed dining room at a decibel level more appropriate for league night at the Bowl-A-Rama.

In this case, it was the restaurant's employees who were the guilty parties. The restaurateur, who spoke anonymously to the Times, complained that his workers were spending too much time on their cell phones during work hours at the expense of the guests' dining experience. He says he warned them several times to put away the phones. But they just ignored him.

The restaurateur's solution? He purchased a small device called a "jammer," which emits a powerful radio signal that is able to shut down cell phone transmission within a certain limited radius. Jammers, according to the Times, are growing in popularity as an increasing number of Americans purchase them specifically to silence loud phone talkers in buses, trains, restaurants and other public areas.

The chief problem with jammers, though, is that--rewarding as they might sound to some of us--they are illegal and can result in fines that run as high as $11,000. The government's concern is that jammers will interfere with emergency communications, such as a link between a hospital and an ambulance.

In the case of the Maryland restaurateur, investigators from the Federal Communications Commission did get wind of his unlawful jammer use and paid a visit to his restaurant in an attempt to catch him in the act. The restaurateur, however, says he had shut the jammer off and thus escaped punishment.

This vigilante approach is only the latest chapter in the evolving story of bad cell phone behavior. Since the 1990s, when cell phone use began to skyrocket, foodservice operators have found themselves between a rock and a hard place when it comes to dealing with the devices. Restaurateurs, by the very nature of their business, seek to accommodate their guests, even those who insist on using cell phones to reach out and touch somebody while they are dining.

In a dynamic, high-energy restaurant, cell phone use does not present much of a problem, with the exception of possibly raising the decibel level a bit more. But in higher-end restaurants where ambient noise--or the lack of it--colors the dining experience, a chatty cell phone user can set everyone's teeth on edge pretty quickly.

One Chicago restaurateur reported that he turned his restaurant into a cell-phone-free zone after an evening in which two tables of customers carried on a running conversation over the course of their meal.

"Unfortunately for everyone else," he said, "the two tables were at opposite ends of the dining room. Furthermore, they were using the cell phones to talk to one another."

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Certainly, most cell phone users are not such yahoos, nor are most restaurateurs inclined to ban the devices' use altogether.

Let's face it: Cell phones, together with Blackberries, iPhones and other handheld devices, have become an indispensable part of our quotidian lives, and virtually everyone is packing one--or even two. In the brief span of a 10-block walk through midtown Manhattan the other day, I counted more than two dozen people strolling alone and either engaged in a cell phone conversation or else thumbing the keyboards of their Blackberries as they retrieved e-mail messages.

We're all very busy these days and require mobility, and these small electronic devices are the umbilical cord to whatever particular mother ship we feel we need to be in touch with at the time.

But even while restaurateurs might comprehend this addiction to communication, they still must walk a fine line when it comes to devising cell phone policies that please everyone. We as individuals also tend to be somewhat self-centered, and even hard-core cell phone users get a bit testy when their $300 evening out at a nice restaurant is hijacked by the personal lives of the strangers at the next table who are trying to tell the babysitter where to find the Kaopectate.

As a result, many restaurateurs have taken to posting discreet yet visible signs requesting that patrons refrain from using phones in the dining rooms as a courtesy to other guests. In other restaurants, management simply offers a cordial appeal to cell phone users to take their calls into the lounge or even outside.

Humor works, too. One upscale New York restaurant used to print a "warning" on the menu advising guests that the use of cellular phones in the restaurant interfered with the preparation of the risotto.

Fortunately, most of us over the years have grown more circumspect about our cell phone use in sensitive surroundings, having learned our lesson by either being on the receiving end of a complaint or by having had to listen to someone nearby drone on and on for what seemed like hours.