Tech etiquette How to behave in public or private By Leslie Gross Klaff  KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE February 6, 2001   Think it's rude when someone grabs a cell phone call in the middle of a restaurant?  Do you get annoyed when the driver swerving into your lane is yakking away on the phone?  That's tame -- at least compared with Darlene Pearson's experience as she interviewed an eager job candidate recently.  Pearson, president of a Charlotte, N.C., technology training firm, cringed when she heard a high-pitched tune squeal from the applicant's purse. She was shocked that the woman had left her phone on.  Pearson was even more appalled when the woman reached into her purse, answered the call and proceeded to have a conversation.  "It did not leave a good impression," said Pearson, president of The Avenue Group. "If it were a weaker candidate, we would have said 'No' based on that."  New technology -- from wireless phones to e-mail to voice mail -- has been a blessing and a curse in business.  On the one hand, it's made workplaces more efficient and effective. People can collaborate without all being available at the same time and without getting into long conversations, said Audrey Glassman, author of "Can I Fax a Thank You Note?" a guide to using new technology.  "We can take care of some things in days that before took weeks or months," Glassman said.  But these modern conveniences also are quickly changing workplace culture. With offices now more casual and less hierarchical, and employees interacting less face to face, the changes call for new business etiquette rules.  While e-mail, voice mail and wireless phones are also changing the way business gets done, e-mail -- because it is so pervasive -- has raised the most issues.  "I get a couple of phone calls a week about problems with e-mails and problems with voice mails," said Kenny Colbert of The Employers Association, a group of 700 Charlotte-area companies.  His advice to business owners has ranged from how to handle employees who e-mail offensive cartoons, to dealing with a chain of sexually graphic e-mails between two employees.  "In some ways, (technology) is speeding up the communication process. But there are other ways it drags down the communication process."  Avid e-mail user Rachel Meyer, a tax partner at Deloitte & Touche's Charlotte office, has found herself falling into a bad habit -- e-mailing colleagues who sit just a few steps away.  So she's made herself a deal: If she has something to say to someone on her floor, she will take the time to have a face-to-face discussion.  The same rule applies to her clients -- as much as possible, she will meet with them in person.  "I fight (e-mailing) because I think you miss a lot of the richness or the dialogue that can go back and forth," Meyer said.  "I'm a firm believer in a face-to-face meeting. I hope I'm not a dying breed."     In a word: overused  Etiquette experts and tech addicts alike agree that e-mail and wireless phones are overused.  Many office workers use e-mail and voice mail to avoid speaking to people in person, said Heidi Schultz, assistant professor of business communication at UNC Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School.  Something is getting lost in the process, she said.  "Because we like to hide behind our computers, we're losing that face-to-face human moment," Schultz said.  "You lose the context and you lose the connection to workers."  That's why Larry Huelsman, a financial representative for Northwestern Mutual Financial Network, shuns e-mail.  Huelsman, a self-described "low-tech" person who admits that his e-mail aversions frustrate friends and colleagues, said he prefers to meet his customers in person and to send handwritten letters, both of which he believes help foster better working relationships. He sends customers birthday cards, newspaper clippings and notes on special occasions.  "I just like the personal contact," he said. "I like to do it handwritten; I like to do it in person. I like to know who I'm dealing with."  There's a time and place for e-mail, and a time and place for in-person discussions, said Ann Humphries, president of Eticon, an etiquette-consulting firm that trains executives.  E-mail is fine for short, nonsensitive questions. But it should not be used as a way to avoid delivering bad news to a colleague face-to-face, she said.  "I see that a lot," she said. "One department launches a Scud missile against another."  Don't forget handwritten letters, which can speak much louder than an e-mail because it's done so infrequently today, she said.     A little too casual  Technology has made others so accessible that it's made the workplace more informal, less hierarchical -- and in some cases -- less professional, etiquette experts say.  E-mail, for example, has broken down the traditional communication barriers between lower-level employees and higher-level employees, Schultz said.  Lower-ranking workers may not have to go through a hierarchy of people to set up a meeting with the CEO of a company.  Instead, they can shoot off an e-mail. Technology has made large companies less intimidating places to do business in, but it's also made some workers a little too at ease, she said.  "Because we don't have to look at someone, people say things in e-mail they would never say to a person in person," Schultz said. "So it's created a more open environment."  Now people tend to communicate more than they should, Glassman said, like sending out jokes on e-mail to long lists of friends and colleagues.  Before e-mail, it wouldn't have been acceptable to photocopy a joke and distribute it throughout the office, she said.  "I do think it's made work less formal, certainly," Glassman said. "I think it's brought down the bar at what level we're communicating with each other."  That informality worries Pearson, of The Avenue Group. That's why she doesn't allow employees to use wireless phones when contacting clients for the first time.  She believes wireless phones give the impression the caller is distracted or too busy to call from the office. Pearson wants those first calls to be made from the office.  The informality of e-mail is spilling over into the content of the message, and proper grammar and spelling often lose.  That can be a poor reflection on a company, said Jacqueline Whitmore, founder and executive director of The Protocol School of Palm Beach, Fla., which offers etiquette training for executives.  Most of the e-mails Sherre DeMao, president of SLD Unlimited Marketing/PR, receives have typos in them.  "It tells me that they were careless," she said. "It makes me worry about what we're sending out."  So about six months ago, DeMao started requiring her staff to spell-check and proofread short e-mails and to print out a hard copy and proofread long e-mails.     E-mail watch  Because e-mail is so easy to use, and sometimes people are sending things they shouldn't be sending, more and more companies are keeping an eye on their employees' communications.  E-mail is a permanent record, but because people can hit a delete key, there's the perception that the e-mail has been erased, which is not the case for many companies, said Brian Edwards, a labor lawyer.  In lawsuits, it's common for either side to ask for old e-mails, and many companies are able to keep records of deleted e-mails for several years.  "For some reason, when people e-mail, they think it's a direct line to the person they're sending it to," he said.  But if workers are sending e-mails on company equipment, the business has a right to monitor the correspondence, and more are doing it.  Nationally, almost three-quarters, or 73.5 percent, of major U.S. firms record and review their employees' communications on the job -- including phone calls, e-mail, Internet connections and computer files, according to a survey by the American Management Association. That's up from 63 percent in 1997.  More than 61 percent of employees said they were not aware their employers were tracking their communications, including e-mails.     Always on  It's hard for Meyer, of Deloitte & Touche, to remember the days when she listened to music on her 20-minute commute home from work.  Now, before she leaves the office, she writes up a list of calls she needs to return. She's on her wireless phone for most of the ride.  "It's easy and it's tempting when we're already working 12-, 15-hour days," Meyer said. "You try to make it more efficient."  Many workers get home from the office and immediately check their e-mail and voice mail.  Wireless phones, e-mail and pagers give the sense that workers are "always on call," Schultz said, and it's blurring the line between when the workday begins and when it ends.  "We are so accessible to our offices, and our offices to us, that the lines between professional and personal are blurred," she said. Copyright 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.