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View Full Version : Texting Democrat loses his seat in NY legislature


dem.re.cmd.exe
June 13th, 2009, 10:21 PM
"You might want to think twice about texting during a meeting with the person who signs your check. A New York State legislator’s career was derailed because one of his financial backers found just such lack of attention to the matters at hand to be rude, and disrespectful. The political contributor lobbied for his removal, and won.

When the Internet and e-mails first became all the rage, Emily Post-style “net-i-quette” lists began to appear. Warnings such as DON’T TYPE IN ALL CAPS, because it implies you are yelling at your correspondent, took a while to make the rounds in the newly forming e-mail community. Now, the Blackberry generation is being given a safety reminder: Dont txt wen drvng. The latest warning falls under the category of not being rude. Reading e-mails or texting while in a meeting is not only a breach of etiquette, it can be hazardous to your employment.

Productivity drops as texters are distracted from their assigned tasks. Time lost texting costs the employer money, and can cost the employee his job. An unproductive worker is one that the boss doesn’t keep on the payroll.

People who pride themselves on multi-tasking are fooling themselves. Research shows that multi-tasking takes more time, and results in more errors than focusing on one task at a time. Multi-tasking people are doing themselves a disservice as well. Nathan Bowling, an expert in workplace psychology says a person doing different things at the same time, isn’t going to retain as much information as they would if they attended to just one thing.

Business etiquette coach Barbara Pachter says we haven’t quite conquered the learning curve in relation to proper behavior involving new technology. Henry Stern, a blogger, was more to the point, offering some common sense advice:

" One should not play with one’s BlackBerry (or anything else) when billionaires who have helped elect you have traveled to your office to talk to you.""

http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/texting-democrat-loses-his-seat-in-ny-legislature-20090612/

bagel
June 18th, 2009, 09:48 PM
What an idiot. He totally deserved it. I hope his wife was having a baby or his mother was in the hospital that he felt he so needed to get out his phone during a meeting.

I get so fed up with people's addiction to texting these days; it's so pathetic. I have a friend who, every time she comes over, spends the majority of her time texting her friends and family. If it was about something important I'd understand, but it's generally not. She even got out her phone and started texting when we were out eating at a restaurant once. Why is it so hard to just tell people that you will call them later?! People need to learn some phone etiquette already because apparently no one understands that it's rude to text at the table, or when you're spending time with someone else.

If this keeps up people are going to forget how to communicate face to face. People are already forgetting how to spell with vowels and using internet acronyms out loud. There's nothing wrong with taking advantage of technology or with using internet acronyms online and in texts, but there's a certain point when we need to realize that we're in real life and that we don't live inside the internet or our phones. [/rant]

Ripplemagne
June 20th, 2009, 09:17 PM
I have to agree with bagely goodness here. Even if I don't agree with it, if any other employer caught you texting while in a meeting, it'd be over for you. And politics is srs bsns, so that's not all that shocking.

Personally, I'm an excellent multi-tasker and I happen to always be doing more than one thing at the same time, but I don't do texting at all. So... eh...