Originally Posted by
Sugarphreak
I think they are more polite than regular phones though
For sure they are a distraction, and nobody likes when you are talking to them and suddenly mid conversation their attention totally leaves you and it leaves an awkward moment of "do I keep talking, pause, or just walk away".
However, when somebody pulls out a giant cell phone after a loud ding to screen a new message, I find that much more intrusive and rude than somebody glancing at their watch.
Back when I was more involved on bigger projects I used to get dragged into 3 or 4 meetings a day, most of them with clients, construction, and vendors. If I got an e-mail, my watch would give a tiny buzz that nobody else could hear and I could discretely check my message to see if it was important. I was getting between 150 to 200 e-mails a day at that time, many from our construction team and workshare offices that were time sensitive, so I needed to be on top of it.
At that time smart watches hadn't really gotten popular yet, and nobody even had a clue what I was up to. Meanwhile most other guys that attended would have a crazy phone noise go off, and then they would whip out their phones and it would be totally obvious they were distracted from the meeting.
These days my watch is saving my ass with class schedules... not only as a reminder, but to tell me what and where. I don't have time to be screwing around with my phone, so it is really nice having a watch.
This is the new culture really... phones haven't been banned, they are everywhere all the time. You occasionally get HR or upper management making a stink about people staying off them, but you can't enforce it unless you are a real asshole to your staff. Even when I was doing those school courses last winter, students were all on their phones during class all the time. Socializing, researching, using apps specific to what were were doing... As long as they were not making noise teachers had grown so accustom to it they don't even care. Workplaces don't stand a chance, the future employees of the world are addicted worse than we are, haha.
The phantom buzz, hahah. I actually get that with my watch now.... is it buzzing? Check... no, not buzzing. What about now? Check, no... not now. haha
Yeah most of the ones I see in the office are iWatches. They are really obvious compared with other watches. Mine is hooked up to my BB Keyone... so it is underground professional, haha
I've had a few people get surprised that mine was a smart watch when I checked the weather. It doesn't have any knobs, you just turn the entire bezel as part of the control system. I swapped out the strap for a black chrome metal link one recently.... goes great with my amazing arm hair.
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