Restaurant cell phone distractions still irritate

Restaurant cell phone distractions still irritate

By By MICHAEL HILL, Associated Press 

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The digital divide is wider than ever between diners who talk, tweet and snap pictures mid-meal and those who wish they'd just shut up, shut down and be present.

Caught at the center of the discord are restaurant owners and chefs, who must walk the careful line of good customer service for both those who dine under the influence of smart phones, and those who won't. But as the devices have morphed into an unrelenting appendage for texting, photography and games, more restaurateurs are challenged to keep the peace.

Owners who once relied mostly on "no cell phones, please" signs, increasingly are experimenting with everything from penalties for using phones, discounts for not and outright bans on photography.

"There's no place to get away from the chatter," said Julie Liberty of Miami, who started the Facebook page "Ban Cell Phones From Restaurants" earlier this year. "Everything has a soundtrack, including when you go into the ladies room. That's just not right."

It's a touchy issue. Consider the crush of news coverage Eva Restaurant in Los Angeles generated when it began offering patrons a 5 percent discount if they leave their phone at the door. Online comments ranged from cheers of "YES!" to others who said their phones would have to be pried from their cold, dead hands.

The policy is working, though. Eva's Rom Toulon said about 40 percent of our customers will leave their cell phones at the door.

"After a few cocktails and glasses of wine, it can be challenging to remember that you left the phone behind," he said.

The burst of headlines for Eva came after a Burlington, Vt., deli took on cyber-folk hero status for posting a sign informing customers that $3 will be added to their bill "if you fail to get off your phone while at the counter. It's rude." Disgusted diners are doing their part too with games like "phone stack," in which everyone places their phones in a stack in the middle of the table. The first person who reaches for their phone pays the bill for all.

These are more creative approaches to the no cell-phone signs now common in restaurants ranging from highbrow to quick-eats. The landmark Boston restaurant Locke-Ober asks diners — in language appropriate for a place with a dress code — to "kindly refrain from using cellular phones." In Albany, N.Y., the Hamilton Street Cafe has a more direct, hand-drawn "No cell phones at the counter" sign with a phone with a red "X'' through it.

Owner Sue Dayton said the sign by the counter helps keep the lunch line moving.

"You get a half-hour for lunch. You walk up here and you have to stand behind someone not paying attention enough to say what kind of bread they want on their BLT because they're on their cell phone," Dayton said.

Irritation over distracted dining has broadened with the rise of photo-sharing apps like Instagram. The popular online scrapbook Pinterest is clogged with pictures of everything from pan fried noodles to poutine snapped moments before digestion. Chefs — who, as a rule, put a premium on control — don't always take kindly to their dining rooms becoming shooting galleries.

Grant Achatz, the famous Chicago-based molecular gastronomist, wrote a much-forwarded post several years ago grousing about diners who snap the meal away and even try to video his staff without asking permission. "I can't imagine how celebrities feel," he wrote. "No wonder they punch the paparazzi out when they get the chance."

Some restaurateurs go with the digital flow. Sarabeth Levine, of New York City-based Sarabeth's, said she's perfectly fine with people chatting, playing games or even taking pictures. It's free advertising, after all.

"I'm happy to have our customers," Levine said. "They come, they tweet, they Facebook, they bring their children. It's high energy to begin with. I mean, people are noisy even in the way they speak today."

Other restaurants go as far as to bar picture taking, like David Chang's Ko in Manhattan. Others take a middle ground, like the high-end Washington, D.C., restaurant Rogue 24, where hostesses politely tell guests that if they do take pictures, please do so without a distracting flash.

"I mean you can't fight it," said owner R. J. Cooper. "Why fight a losing battle?"

Actually, the battle might already be lost.

The use of hand-held devices at the table is implicitly encouraged at the growing number of restaurants that offer Wi-Fi access or accept payment via smartphone. The Manhattan restaurant Comodo even encourages guests to upload pictures of their dishes to Instagram with the hashtag (hash)comodomenu to create a user-generated "Instagram menu." Sharing trends are likely to accelerate as the generation who has no memory of a world before cell phones comes of age.

Already, about one in five U.S. adults say they share online when eating a meal with others, and more than a third of teens do the same, according to the 2012 State of Mobile Etiquette Survey for Intel Corp.

The same survey found 81 percent of U.S. adults believe mobile manners are getting worse, up 6 percentage points from last year. A Zagat survey this month found most respondents disapproving of texting, tweeting and emailing when eating out, but a majority accepted picture taking.

"I think it's about having more time under our belt with what the new normal is," said etiquette expert Anna Post, the great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post.

While the technology is new, the rules of etiquette are old-fashioned common sense. Silence your phone in restaurants and don't answer unless there's a very good reason, like a sick kid back home. And if you do answer, excuse yourself from the table. Try to keep your phone off the table, it signals to your companions that you waiting for something better.

As for taking pictures, Post said consider the sort of place you're in — busy pub or cloistered bistro? — and who you're with.

"Ask yourself, 'Just because I want to take a photo of my food, is this the right place? Am I with the right people for this to be OK?'" Post said. "The answer can't always be yes."

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Analysis: Amid NATO celebration, concern on future

Analysis: Amid NATO celebration, concern on future

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — NATO's reluctance to match the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan may not undercut President Barack Obama's new war strategy so long as the allies carry through on pledges to contribute more nonmilitary assistance.

But in the longer run, an uneven sharing of the combat load in Afghanistan could doom U.S. hopes for relying on NATO as a partner in future conflicts. While the alliance celebrated its 60th anniversary and Obama hailed its more cohesive spirit, none of the leaders inside the Strasbourg castle alluded openly to the hard prospect that NATO troops may stay largely shielded while American soldiers are exposed to most of the battles and casualties.

The summit over the weekend ended with NATO's agreement to contribute 5,000 more troops to bolster the intensified U.S. push for more security in Afghanistan's cities and training for beleaguered Afghan soldiers and police.

The NATO additions are not insubstantial. But they pale beside Obama's decision to send 21,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines this year to buttress 38,000 American troops fighting the Taliban. The new NATO contingent — adding to the alliance's 35,000 troops in Afghanistan — would even be outstripped by the 10,000 more troops that senior American commanders are urging Obama to deploy to the conflict next year.
Left unsettled is how a NATO that was built on the principle of sharing security burdens can continue to play a role in the global effort to defeat Islamic extremism if it is unwilling to assume more of the risks in tight corners like Afghanistan.

"That's a significant problem for the alliance, going forward," said Nicholas Burns, a former American ambassador to NATO who is now a professor of diplomacy and international politics at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

"We all agreed to go into Afghanistan. The essence of the alliance is that we share responsibility and we share commitments," Burns said. "And for some of the countries to essentially refuse to send their troops to combat areas, I still think, is an important issue that cannot be forgotten."

U.S. congressional leaders have been vocal in bringing up reminders. At a hearing last week on U.S. strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the allies' stance in Afghanistan was "nothing short of pitiful."

But generally the Americans have taken on the bulk of the fight against the Taliban and against terrorists like al-Qaida.

With the first U.S. surge troops soon expected to arrive, a delegation of senior U.S. officials visited Kabul on Sunday to deal with the knotty issue of Afghanistan's approaching election. U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen met much of the day with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other candidates and government officials.

High on the agenda is settling the question of who will serve as president after Karzai's term expires in May, since the presidential election will not be held until August. Holbrooke said Sunday it appears that Karzai will remain in office in that interim period. But the diplomat carefully added that the U.S. is taking no position on Karzai's re-election effort.

Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, also welcomed Iran to join Afghan stabilization talks in "whatever forums work for them."

The American willingness to include Iran in talks on Afghanistan's future is indicative of the new administration's tack to broaden the world's involvement in what was mostly a U.S. enterprise during the Bush years.

But the uneasy outlook for NATO's role in Afghanistan is central to a still-unsettled debate about whether the alliance should return to its focus on preventing conflict within its own borders. NATO was created in April 1949 as a bulwark against a Soviet land invasion to conquer western Europe, but since the collapse of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, NATO has been an alliance in search of a reason for being.

Obama's strategy for Afghanistan contains themes that the Europeans have been preaching for years. They include the need to more closely integrate the roles of combat and nonmilitary activities such as developing the Afghan economy, promoting reconciliation with some insurgents, and finding more effective ways of strengthening the credibility of the Afghan government.

Mullen said Obama's new war strategy makes clear that the U.S. needs help from allies to build a firmer foundation for stabilizing Afghanistan.

"Probably the most important part is to create governance in the country at every level — not just the national level but also at the district level, the provincial level," he said in a speech in New York on Thursday before flying to the NATO summit.

But without real harmony, Mullen added, "it won't make any difference how many more troops we send it — it's not going to work."

EDITOR'S NOTE _ Robert Burns has covered national security affairs for The Associated Press since 1990.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.