Yesterday I was paying for items at a grocery store. The cashier was not rude, but she was not friendly. Everything she said was brief and without much feeling.
As I picked up my bag, I noticed why: She was in the middle of a video call on her smart phone.
I, the customer, was an interruption.
Cell phones, and especially smart phones, have given us many benefits. I’m not here to debate that.
They have also given us many problems. I’m here to discuss one controversy: Should employees have them?
There are three reasons why not, and they all have to do with attention.
Screens always win
My cashier is not the only one who struggles to put on a good face when a customer approaches, or it’s time to tackle a particular problem.
In elementary school, I was on an academic team. We were competitive and successful.
And then somebody brought a Nintendo to our regional tournament. It turns out that the part of our brain needed to get Mario off of World 3-1 was not the same part that buzzed in to answer hard questions. We were in the wrong gear.
We emerged from the ether just in time for our games. Our heads weren’t ready. Other teams trounced us.
The screen always wins.
At the very first academic team match in our area, the moderator asked this question: “Who is the father of Clint and Bo Buchanan?”
My mother began complaining to the spectators around her: Why in the world would they ask elementary school kids a question about a soap opera?
Then she experienced shame as her son buzzed in with the correct answer (Asa Buchanan, of course).
Imagine what my brain could have stored if I hadn’t been watching Mom’s soap operas out of the corner of my eye.
The screen always wins.
It is just too difficult to switch gears in the moment, to get our heads back in the game. Since the screen will win this battle for attention, the customers lose.
Radar up
Another problem with smart phones. That attention they demand prevent us from noticing what is happening in our environment.
We could use texting while walking as an example–or its even more dangerous cousin, texting while driving.
But even when stationary in the workplace, it’s extremely difficult to stay engaged with a phone in hand.
Attention comes from a Latin root meaning “to stretch.” Think of the “tension” of a guitar string stretched taut. It requires effort–energy from the CPU of our brain.
And it is in constant demand:
The customer who enters and needs to be acknowledged.
The customer who gives off cues that they need help.
The situation brewing that could be headed off at the pass.
Phones require our brain to stretch toward their tasks. And we don’t have leftover space in our brains to stretch toward the dynamics of the workplace.
Attention spans
Attentions spans in the moment are one thing. But there is real evidence that screens can ruin our attention spans for the long term.
A North African blogger has an interesting post about successful authors who refuse to have the Internet, let alone a phone. His overall concern is that we are losing the ability to read. Even when the phone is out of our hands … we don’t have the ability to focus long enough to glean meaning or utility or pleasure from a book.
This is, by the way, a problem the American culture already had. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville noticed it:
Habitual inattention must be regarded as the greatest defect of the democratic mind.
He observed that (for reasons beyond the scope of this post) Americans were always striving to improve their financial and social position. Less capitalist and industrialized nations were not that way.
There are some amazing benefits to capitalism. It has increased the quality of life for countless groups of people. And there are amazing benefits to smart phones. The North African blogger above said that he wouldn’t have escaped the “s–thole” he was raised in without access to the outside world via the Internet.
But imagine how Tocqueville would react to where we find ourselves now. There are certainly a lot of us striving. But there are just as many of us, to use Neil Postman’s phrase, “amusing ourselves to death.” The satirical movie “Idiocracy” comes to mind.
The phone box
Some of us know all of the above dangers and decide the good justifies the evil. As much as I hate how often I look at my phone, I couldn’t travel for work without it. Some employees need a phone for communicating with coworkers (although we could figure out a way to do that without personal cell phones, right?).
Some of us also know that taking phones away from employees would be similar to drug withdrawal. In this day and age, you might ask, are you sure we want to do one more thing to make employees want to leave?
Fair enough. But let me tell you about an experiment of sorts that points a way forward.
I heard from some folks associated with Chick-fil-A that a certain restaurant had a unique policy. It was a phone box. If every family member left their phones in the box through the entire meal, they would get free ice cream.
So there was an incentive built in to encourage the behavior–and not an expensive one at that.
But here’s the thing: When families put their phones in the box … they had a magical evening.
They made eye contact.
The dust settled in their minds and allowed them to think clearly and to see each other, in some cases, for the first time in a long while.
It is the gift of presence. Paying attention–there’s that word again–to others.
I heard about a Christian musician who leaves his phone on the tour bus so he’s not tempted to look at pornography. Seem extreme? What did Jesus say about if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out? And I bet his wife appreciates it.
Customers appreciate it, too. It has been a consistent complaints on various customer surveys that they do not feel listened to or valued in retail businesses. Presence would change that.
This post isn’t advocating a specific policy and method. But what would happen if you started incentivizing and encouraging a culture of people paying attention to the job instead of the phone?
What benefits might the employees see if they gave–and received–the gift of presence?
Manager, what if it started with you?
Today, give the gift of presence to your team.