I'm glad no one I know plays this childish game, speaking as someone who is occasionally on call, lives under the conscious commitment to always pick up the phone when my wife calls, or maybe just likes to check the time every so often.
It's possible that's all you use your phone for at the table, but if you take a step back and observe, is that really all you use it for?
Do you look at that incoming email that isn't from the on-call address? Do you just check for new messages even when nobody is calling? Do you look at your twitter feed? Facebook? Just a quick check onto a favorite web site? Tap out replies to anything except on-call or your wife?
It could be that you're the exception - maybe you do only respond when you hear the special notification sound for your wife or the on-call originating address. I'm dubious - but that's colored by my own experience. I thought much the same of myself until I actually stopped and paid attention to what I was doing with my phone when around others.
When I'm on call all my pages come in over SMS so I'm generally only responding to alert sounds and only doing anything about it if it came from the pager gateway or my wife. Aside from phone and SMS I have all other notification sounds turned off. Unless it's my wife or a page I wouldn't even unlock the phone if I was genuinely spending time with people. The current time is on the lock screen so there's that.
A lot of times though, in a lunch-with-coworkers situation, we just run out of things to talk about and check our phones sometimes and that's okay.
... And check your Facebook, and Instagram your food, and reply some email that actually will wait until the next day but you want your boss to see that you're "working" after hours, and maybe a bit of Twitter...
If you want to do all that, stay at home alone and do it on your PC. If you want to enjoy a meal in the company of friends, then try to live a bit more in the moment.
Yeah the thing is, I don't do all of that shit, which is why I would resent going out with friends who would treat me like a child. But I actually do have to answer my phone sometimes.
So he lists a couple of pretty reasonable reasons to have a phone (emergency contact/replacement for a wristwatch) and you immediately assume he's using Instagram instead? There are words to describe the kind of person you're being right now.
Yes, there are also words to describe seeing someone make a general point on the Internet and piping up why you are so special and unique that it doesn't apply. It's a game, nothing more. Snowflake.
I don't think I'm unique and special. A hallmark of a healthy marriage is that you're willing to drop everything if your spouse genuinely needs you, and lots of people are married. If you're a parent, you're going to drop everything if your children genuinely need you. Lots of people are on call in their professional lives.
To me, the biggest difference between childhood and adulthood is that adults have real responsibilities that are more important than silly games.
