Etiquette

A friend of mine was forced to leave a drinks party with three friends because they spent more time scrolling through their Facebook feeds than having a proper conversation around the table. Does that ever happen to you?

Today’s dilemma: is it ever okay to ask your friend to switch off their phone while you’re getting together? And does “where” you are make a difference? For example, is it more or less offensive to check your phone around the dinner table than at a backyard BBQ?

While you’re contemplating that, check out this video from clever American blogger, Brian Perez. He’s invented the phone-stacking game. The explanation is over the jump.

Continue reading "Friday dilemma: Using your smartphone at dinner" »

The woman booked a table for 10 at 7pm, Thursday, at the hip Bentley Bar and Restaurant in Sydney’s Surry Hills.

Owner Nick Hildebrand had to turn away four couples trying their spontaneous luck because his 50-seater was fully booked, but by 7.45pm, that big table still hadn’t arrived so he called them and was told they were on the way.

It sat empty for another 30 minutes, so he called again but this time, she didn’t answer. They never arrived.

Continue reading "Restaurant no-shows should plate up or shut up" »

Australian senators accused of leering at each other’s posteriors? Of failing to show respect? Of not “bowing and scraping” sufficiently in deference to the chair?

Welcome to just another day on the plush red carpet of the nation’s more civilised Upper House.

But then, the final sitting Thursday was never just any old day was it?

Continue reading "Arsegate and other Upper House shenanigans" »

Tired of scrutinising slow-mo footage of suspicious ripples in Beyonce’s baby bump, I’m pleased to announce that we’re free to analyse another equally significant, universe-buckling event.

The Prime Minister didn’t curtsy to the Queen. No. I don’t think you understand. PRIME MINISTER. DIDN’T CURTSY. QUEEN. Surprisingly the police weren’t called, but the indignant tutting of monarchists could be heard from space, much like the Governor General’s outfit.

See, ‘curtsy’ is an abbreviation of the word ‘courtesy’. Well, it probably is – I leave that kind of research to proper journalists. They sound similar though, and that can’t be a coincidence, right? It’s similar to the way that ‘Negus’ is short for ‘Never Give Up Sixty Minutes’, in that I made it up just then.

Continue reading "Gillard should have bobbed. It’s just common curtsy" »

When I was a teenager, there was nothing I wanted more than to move out of suburbia. I grew up in a place so nondescript that, after performing there, John Cleese remarked that if you wanted to kill yourself but lacked the courage, a visit to my home city “would do the trick”. (Locals had the last laugh by naming the municipal dump after him.)

The city itself wasn’t the problem – solid agricultural attitudes and a bit of civic symmetry rather please me – it was the stultifying ordinariness of life in suburbia. The predictable pleasantness of everything from progressive dinners to neighbourly sugar sharing. My best friend and I even coined the term ‘subby dip’ for the onion-soup-mix and sour-cream confection routinely served with Jatz crackers. Our derision was to be expected. We were 19.

We wanted to be, as our favourite band sang, “making love on the edge of a knife”, not on the floral bedspreads or in the lavender-scented gardens of our boyfriends’ parents.

Continue reading "You have to leave suburbia to really, truly love it" »

Four friends were dining over lunch in a swish Adelaide restaurant last weekend when a woman at the next table pulled out her chair and proceeded to change her baby’s nappy on the floor.

Can you believe that? The four friends couldn’t. They were so stunned they decided to phone The Sunday Mail.

“It was just so unhygienic and inappropriate,” said one. “Luckily it was only a wet nappy – imagine if it had been really messy.”

No thanks, ladies. Might put me off my own lunch. But talk about taking the new mums’ cause back 20 years.

Continue reading "Houston wee have a problem" »

Everyone should abide by driving laws but I reckon there’s a need for a guide to driving etiquette.

Is it just me or are drivers becoming more agitated, more selfish and lacking any respect for other motorists? They aren’t necessarily breaking the law, they just make driving more annoying.

Gone are the days when driving was a pleasure. Today it’s a means of getting from one place to another with the least amount of aggro.

Continue reading "A reasonable person’s guide to modern driving" »

As of next month Air New Zealand passengers will be allowed to use mobiles while on board, enabling Kiwi jet-setters to advise their loved ones that their flight is on schedule and they’ll be home by sucks.

What really sucks about this move is that it will destroy the sole remaining bastion of public peace, the sanctuary of the aircraft, which in this hyper-connected modern world is the only escape from texts, tweets, emails, and the sheer horror of the loud and long-winded conversations of strangers.

I’ve never been to New Zealand but from what I can gather it consists of two islands, each of them about 500km long, with a large airport in the middle somewhere so that its citizens can emigrate to Australia to find work. Based on this rough estimate the longest domestic flight in NZ would take about 40 minutes and the extremely popular one-way flight to Bondi only marginally longer.

Continue reading "Texts, tweets, emails and other inanities at 36,000 ft" »

Most people in this country spend around 35 hours plus, (give or take sick days, annual leave, religious holidays, extended lunch breaks, taking a nap in the archive room etc), per week at work.

Given that this represents such a high percentage of our lives, it makes sense, to some degree, that we be as comfortable as possible in these environments, maybe even do little things here and there that make the workplace more homely. The key phrases here however, are “to some degree” and “do little things”.

Continue reading "Do’s and don’ts for surviving the workplace" »

It all started with Bob.

Sorry, I mean, “Bawb….”

“Baaawwwwwb…!”

Even if you really didn’t want to listen, there was very little choice, the American woman’s voice rang out across the terminal in a short, high pitched southern Florida squall.

Continue reading "Don’t pack your accent when you go overseas" »

THE past week has been filled with some serious news from serious places. Luckily none of this need concern us here, as Suburban Tales presents you with men bearing flowers, cars bearing children’s play equipment, and tow trucks bearing your automobile.

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Sleazy or Cheesy: Where is the line between sleaze and old-fashioned courtesy?

Everybody has a pervy uncle. They’re part of the wider family ecology, along with the smarter, more popular alpha-cousin and the preternaturally athletically gifted niece who’s destined to represent her state in a sport no one cares about. We all know the tricks in the pervy uncle’s sleazy arsenal:

Continue reading "Suburban tales: Rules for the pervy uncle, and more" »

Last Friday I did the unthinkable – I switched off my mobile phone.

At first there was the separation anxiety, not unlike the cravings one feels when on a diet, that insatiable yearning for something you know you can’t have. Then there was the involuntary impulse to reach into my pocket to check the phone for a text message, email or a missed call. Every look at the blank screen was disappointing.

As lunchtime approached, I’d become suitably acclimatised to this change to my daily routine. I read the newspaper uninterrupted over a strong Irish tea. It makes you realise how much the mobile impacts on everyday life. I use it far too much. If you ask me, enough is enough.

Continue reading "Phones-off Fridays" »

It’s taken a few tests but I’ve finally figured out why it’s so hard to watch the new Kmart ad without grimacing. Have you seen it? It’s the one where an attractive young mum pushes a stroller through Kmart with one hand, balances a two-year old on her hip and talks on her mobile phone with the other, while the older child (my guess about five years of age?) runs ahead of her. 

Cue super helpful Kmart guy who comes to the rescue, somehow managing to both read her mind and reach for the most hard-to-get kettle on the shelf, deposit it into the hands of the renegade five year old and not for a single second interrupt the woman’s phone-call. 

The result, a wonderfully apt depiction of all the things that drive me nuts about shopping centres, specifically supermarkets and the pesky little habits they bring out in even the best of people.

Continue reading "Don’t bring your kids and other supermarket rules" »

One sunny afternoon I was coming out of Sydney’s Redfern Station and a woman with a child asked me for money. I felt so sorry for her that I gave her my last 5 bucks. Feeling self-satisfied at my generosity, I walked away with a smile on my face. Then something strange happened. She yelled out sarcastically, “Thanks, you … slut”.

Up until this point I’d always thought I’d given money to “beggars” unconditionally –  certainly I’d always shouted down people who moralised that “they will only spend it on drugs and alcohol”. But with her insult, something inside me snapped.

Marching back up to her I demanded my money back. She told me to “f… off” as I proceeded to give her a lecture on begging etiquette. My view, which I proceeded to ram down her throat with some equally colourful language, was that she should be polite to me because I gave her the last of my money.

Continue reading "An unfinished guide to etiquette for beggars" »

Imagine someone asked you to write a book on “the rules” in your office.

How many things would make your list of do’s and don’ts and would the appearance of your colleagues make the cut?

Laurence Caracalla is a former Paris press officer and a stickler for “appropriate behaviour at work”.

Continue reading "French office etiquette rule #133: be boring as hell" »

AS the nation scorches, it’s time to confront a less obvious side-effect of the drought - brolly barbarians.

It’s been so long since many Aussies have unfurled an umbrella, when rain does arrive we abandon the basic etiquette of wet weather gear.

The umbrella has - in the grasp of inexperienced Aussies - become a weapon. Watch during the next welcome shower. It’s enough to induce a Britney-style rage.

Continue reading "Good golly, you don’t know how to use a brolly" »

Now the movie Australia was long. Really long. Which might explain why when I saw it at the cinema the guy down the row not only answered two phone calls, but smoked two cigarettes inside the cinema during the flim.

I wish now The Drover had turned his head from the dusty plain, stepped down through the silver screen into the cinema and said to the guy what I was too shy to say: turn it off you selfish idiot! (Just to clarify this Drover dream sequence of mine was all about mobile phone etiquette, nothing else, really.)

Harry Connick Jr, however, would have been as useless as me. Sitting there wishing the battery would go flat but politely soldiering on “in character”.

Continue reading "Turn your phone off you inconsiderate twerp" »