A few weeks ago while I was up at Tech Ed during one of the presentations, someone’s phone rang.  We’ve all had that person in the meeting… and in some ways, since everyone has on some occasion forgotten to turn off their phone, let me not cast the first stone here.  The offender headed out to take the call and headed back in after the call… and as soon as they sat down – AGAIN their phone starts ringing.   So at this point its fair game to throw stones… but I thought about my own situation.

I once rarely thought of turning off my phone but a few months ago I set it to vibrate… again… and something strange happened – I forgot to turn the ringer back on.  The next call came in and I knew it and that was it, I’ve just permanently left it on vibrate.  In considering this I thought about all the places where I ‘should’ have the ringer turned off vs. on.  Then I considered the cases where if my phone was in vibrate mode and I wanted the call I wouldn’t know.  For example if I’ve left my phone in another room while I’m playing with my son – I don’t care if it’s “ringing”.  The challenge of course – some women carry their phones in their purse as opposed on their body.  The result is that they don’t feel a vibrating phone – they still need ringers – as do kids who like the attention. 

But seriously if you’re an adult and you carry a cell phone – put it permanently on vibrate.  I recently got a Blackberry and all the messages come in with vibrate mode – not a ringer.  Do you know why they’re called “Crackberry” – because even without ringing those message vibrations are enough to keep people up to date on their messages.