05-20-2019, 02:57 AM
I've actually ended an employment over cell phone use while driving, and got into a serious conflict with a co-worker at another office over the same subject.
I once had a boss that insisted on answering calls and texts at any time, any place, in any situation, including while driving on the highway at 70mph. whenever I was in the truck with him on the way to a jobsite, there would be an endless barrage of calls and texts coming in, which he would always deal with and answer immediately. he thought he was "on the ball." i eventually confronted him about it and told him it had to stop. it was dangerous for himself and dangerous for his business. he said he was fine and not to worry about it. I then informed him that for my own safety i would not ride with him if it was going to continue. he told me "you're my employee and you're going to have to ride with me when I ask you to." So i fixed that immediately.
The other case was a measurer that worked for me. She was always on the road visiting jobsites day and and day out taking measurements and then feeding them back to me so that I could process designs and orders based on them. She insisted on taking the measurements and then calling in the numbers to me right away, as if this stuff was that urgent. not to mention that calling me with a string of numbers is begging for mistakes to take place. it came to my attention after a while that she was actually making these calls *while driving* to the next jobsite. she was literally holding her measuring paperwork up on her steering wheel, holding her phone to her head, and reading the numbers to me while she was driving. absolute madness. the whole thing devolved into a conflict where i basically told her that I would no longer take calls from her if she didn't change her behavior. in the end, i had to teach her how to take pictures with her cellphone so that she could email me a snapshot of the measurements **before** getting into her car.
The moral of the story is some people just can't stand to wait however long it takes to pull over, have a conversation, send a text, and then get back on the road free and clear. they do anything to complete that conversation, and have such a short attention span that they can't remember to call somebody back later. it's going to take a campaign similar to "click it or ticket" of a large and aggressive scale to get people to finally stop.
i propose the campaign tagline: "phones down or downtown" for a campaign in which people caught driving while operating a cellphone are actually cuffed on the side of the road and booked into jail.
I once had a boss that insisted on answering calls and texts at any time, any place, in any situation, including while driving on the highway at 70mph. whenever I was in the truck with him on the way to a jobsite, there would be an endless barrage of calls and texts coming in, which he would always deal with and answer immediately. he thought he was "on the ball." i eventually confronted him about it and told him it had to stop. it was dangerous for himself and dangerous for his business. he said he was fine and not to worry about it. I then informed him that for my own safety i would not ride with him if it was going to continue. he told me "you're my employee and you're going to have to ride with me when I ask you to." So i fixed that immediately.
The other case was a measurer that worked for me. She was always on the road visiting jobsites day and and day out taking measurements and then feeding them back to me so that I could process designs and orders based on them. She insisted on taking the measurements and then calling in the numbers to me right away, as if this stuff was that urgent. not to mention that calling me with a string of numbers is begging for mistakes to take place. it came to my attention after a while that she was actually making these calls *while driving* to the next jobsite. she was literally holding her measuring paperwork up on her steering wheel, holding her phone to her head, and reading the numbers to me while she was driving. absolute madness. the whole thing devolved into a conflict where i basically told her that I would no longer take calls from her if she didn't change her behavior. in the end, i had to teach her how to take pictures with her cellphone so that she could email me a snapshot of the measurements **before** getting into her car.
The moral of the story is some people just can't stand to wait however long it takes to pull over, have a conversation, send a text, and then get back on the road free and clear. they do anything to complete that conversation, and have such a short attention span that they can't remember to call somebody back later. it's going to take a campaign similar to "click it or ticket" of a large and aggressive scale to get people to finally stop.
i propose the campaign tagline: "phones down or downtown" for a campaign in which people caught driving while operating a cellphone are actually cuffed on the side of the road and booked into jail.