Etiquette is one of those things that’s meant to be on its way out. To attempt to bring some old skool decorum and manners into your daily life will cast you as a throwback, a dinosaur, or worse, if you’re a man, a rampant, unreconstructed sexist. Open a door for a woman? Sexist. Offer her the better seat in a restaurant? Sexist. Compliment her on her attire, and be prepared for an immediate visit from HR.
The other day, as one of our lifts reached the ground floor, I waited until all the women had got out first. Which would have been fine, if the last one to leave hadn’t looked at me as though I were Prince Andrew. I suddenly felt as though I was very obviously and extremely publicly about to order a takeaway from Pizza Express. The one in Woking.
Phone etiquette meanwhile appears to be a generational thing, especially as no one under the age of 27 ever uses one as an actual telephone (whenever I call one of my daughters, the response is always the same: “Has someone died?”). Gen Z think nothing of answering WhatsApp messages during dinner, while their behaviour makes any Gen X-er or Boomer go doolally.
Noise is the one that gets me; the only time in the past 10 years I’ve engineered a confrontation that could have resulted in something physical was when I threatened to throw someone’s phone out the window on the Gatwick Express if he didn’t turn the damn thing down (I don’t think I’d had any breakfast).
Using your phone in a bathroom is no different to eating a sandwich while being there
But there is another piece of phone etiquette that I think all men should adhere to, regardless of age, which is not using it in the loo, especially while they’re peeing.
Years ago, there was a delightful chain of upmarket burger bars called Tootsies. They were mainly in west London, and I once saw Dame Joanna Lumley celebrate her birthday in the one on Holland Park Avenue. They were feelgood restaurants, the kind that didn’t try to boot you out as soon as you finished.
By the till there was always a big jar of mints, which you were encouraged to enjoy as you left. But as many people tended to use the facilities before they left, obviously the free mint jar was a thing you avoided; after all, did you really want to pick up a mint that may have been brushed by an unwashed hand? If you ever saw someone eat one, you slightly squirmed inside.
This is how I feel about the mobile phone being used as your colleagues are at the urinals. It’s not that I’m ever going to pick up their phones (not now I’m not, anyway), but it’s just that the whole procedure seems so icky. It’s really no different from eating a sandwich while you’re doing the same thing (I actually witnessed a rather more dramatic version of this in Kabul once, when I was embedded with the British Army in Helmand, but that’s a different story altogether).
It’s not simply the hygiene issue (if you’re doing it at Old Trafford or Loftus Road, it’s forgivable. Having spent rather too much time in the lavatories in Old Trafford, I wouldn’t go anywhere near the taps), it’s the boorishness of it all.
If you’ve ever spent any time in an airport lounge, apart from the weirdos drinking cheap champagne for breakfast (never a good idea to turn down a freebie, eh boys?), there will always be some performative loudmouth striding around, going through his most recent “deal” in intricate detail, while implicitly patronising the poor sap on the other end of the phone. All this really does is say “I have a job”, and it’s uniformly pathetic.
Why anyone wants to be performative in the loo is beyond me, and surely there is no phone call that can’t wait a minute while you have a pee. So there we have it. It’s not terrifically edifying to discuss the habits of men when they’re in the lavatory, and I apologise that the Evening Standard has to be the place you read this, but I’m calling it: don’t take your mobile into the Gents.
It’s weird. And a bit dirty.
