The talk of the weekend was the iphone.  There were lines to get one, questions about its use, interest in this overnight icon of the electronic world.  No doubt this will be the flavor of the month in hot new electronic chic.  But not for me.

I won’t get an iphone.  In all likelihood, I will never even touch an iphone.  And that’s fine with me. Putting aside my general aversion to cutting edge technology, cellphones (with whatever bells and whistles come with them) reflect the worst of what technology has wrought. 

A new client asked me the other day to give her my cell number.  I swear she did.  It was jarring to hear those words come out of her mouth.  I had already given her my card with my office number and email address, but that wasn’t good enough.  She wanted my cellphone number.  No, she demanded it.

For many years, I would tell clients not to call me after 5 on a Friday as I would not respond until Monday morning.  They asked, “What if I’m arrested?”  “Then I will know where to find you on Monday morning,” I replied.  The idea was that I, too, had a life.  Being available 24/7 for their every whim tended to put a crimp in my time with my kids.  They mattered too.  In fact, they mattered more.

Clients understood this, and agreed to it.  They would give me some space, and had no expectation that it was fine to call me at any hour of the day or night, unless of course it was a real emergency.  Then I was always available for them.  But as we all know, 90% of the phone calls have nothing to do with emergencies, but with anxiety and the need for a little comfort and hand-holding.  But because the only way a client had to reach me was my office telephone number, I would listen to the message and make the assessment of whether they really needed me, or just wanted me, at any given moment.  The issue was theirs. The choice was mine.

And then came cellphones.  I had a relatively early one, which looked like something out of Get Smart, was huge, enormously expensive and worked poorly.  It was cool.  But since it was given to me by a client to use, I had it.  The client called me on it just once.  At $12 a minute, it was only used when absolutely necessary.

For the next decade, cellphones were secondary to beepers.  I never had a beeper.  I refused to be “beeped”, like some puppy at the beck and call of its master.  That was not for me.

Cellphones came into fashion.  Still expensive to use, people were reluctant to give out numbers, limiting them to their closest friend.  And not everyone had one, even though they were obviously becoming ubiquitous, so you could plausibly deny ownership.  Particularly if you were simultaneously taking on curmudgeon-like tendencies.

But those days are all gone.  Everyone has a cellphone from the age of 10 on.  Kids who don’t have food to eat have cellphones.  And they use them.  Everyone, it seems to me, uses them.

True story: I did a deposition representing an attorney (I represent a lot of other lawyers and their family members) who sat there through the EBT typing on his crackberry.  He looked like he was masturbating.  I finally called for a break, and grabbed his gadget and threatened to smash it on the floor unless he stopped.  The rest of the deposition, he looked like he was going through withdrawal.

So is this whole scenario nuts?  Do we really need to be accessible every second of the day?  Is it reasonable for clients to expect that they can call us at any moment, and reach us?  God no.  This trend is horrendous.  The expectation that we can be reached at any second is unreasonable.  And by doing so, we do a disservice to our clients and ourselves.

If I’m meeting with you, I will not be on the phone with someone else.  It is rude and counterproductive.  The person with whom I’m meeting deserves my undivided attention.  And I deserve his.  Clients meet me and, during the meeting, their phones will ring a few times.  I will tell them to either turn it off or the meeting is over.  My time is not captive to their cellphone.  And their time is not captive to mine.

I’m not going to get into the issues of cellphones in elevators or trains, where I am constrained to hear about bad dates or ill-fitting clothing.  Or worse.  I understand that kids can’t conceive of a world where they are not absolutely entitled to discuss anything they want in front of the entire world, or where disturbing others with their mindless chatter presents a problem.  But I don’t have to like it.  And I refuse to do it.

Does this brand me as a technological Philistine?  I suppose it does.  But I wear that mantle with pride.  You will not find me on line to be the first on my block to get a new iphone.  In fact, I am perfectly happy with the free phone they give me when I renew my contract.  It gets calls. It makes calls.  And it probably does other things, but I will never know.  And no, you can’t have my cellphone number.