dinner/phone etiquette

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. My live-in girlfriend and I are having a disagreement about the use of the phone at the dinner table. Recently, her 14 yr old daughter was in the middle of a phone conversation with her grandmother (who lives 1600 miles away) when it was 'time' to start dinner. All three of us sat at the table and the daughter continued the phone conversation with her grandmother. The conversation ended shortly thereafter, but the circumstances have led to an interesting disagreement between my girlfriend and I: Which of the following options would have been showing correct manners: 1) To allow the daughter to continue the phone conversation at the dinner table 2) To have the daughter continue the phone conversation, but not at the dinner table. 3) To have the daughter ask the grandmother to call back or to offer to call the grandmother back after dinner.

A. #3 would be most appropriate (ideally with the granddaughter offering to call back). However, I can imagine some instances in which the granddaughter could be trying very hard to extricate herself from the conversation and explain it was time for dinner and having little success with the grandmother ;-) In that case, she should at least have been trying to wrap up the conversation while away from the table, not talking while *at* the table. Also, in a family situation I think there are perhaps a few times when a special phone call might supersede dinner. It seems unlikely this would be such a case, but an emergency or some other critical situation might be a reason to excuse one's self from the table and carry on the conversation, keeping it to the minimum necessary. I can't think of any situation where it would be appropriate to continue the conversation *at* the table, though. Not really; just suggesting that contact between a 14 year old girl and an elderly grandmother 1600 miles away is rare and precious enough that the importance of a formal dinner start time with mom and her boyfriend pales in comparison. Dinner can wait. What exactly is preventing this phone conversation from happening at a more suitable time? (And please don't melodramatically bring up death - what is it that makes a dinnertime conversation necessary on that day, or that week?) And, you seem to emphasize the mother's friend's relationship. Does this have anything in particular to do with the situation? Why would I melodramatically bring up death? Far as I'm concerned, contact from a real, live grandma takes precedence over some artificially established deadline to eat. It's not as if it was a call from some playmate from next door she can talk to any time...it's her grandmother who lives across country somewhere, and yeah, hanging up on grandma because Larry Live-in is ready to eat seems like a really poor choice and a backward priority. The OP said it was his live-in and her daughter with whom he was about to eat, which means the grandma on the phone isn't *his* mother. This makes me think that, just maybe, it isn't any of his particular concern...it's for the granny, the mother, and the girl to work out. Who wants the food to be ready and then wait while someone talks on the phone? The thing I hate most about eating at other people's houses is they have beautiful food coming out of the broiler or the grill, and then they take literally 15 minutes to get the drinks and get everyone to sit down and finally serve the food. The meat is cold by then. I was at my brother's a few months ago and he was complaining about the very same thing. It's interesting because our mother didn't do that, so it must be because she didn't do that that we hate it when others do.

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