151 Quick Ideas to Deal With Difficult People

92The Cell Phone and What Ails Us

A woman who uses her cell phone exclusively at home accidentally left it at work over a weekend. The phone rang frequently with a tinny rock tune. She didn’t call in to alert her colleagues about her forgetfulness or to ask them to turn the phone off. She just resigned herself to letting it ring. And it did frequently until a frustrated coworker marched over to her desk and turned it off.

Cell-phone abuse is emblematic of what ails employees in cubicle settings. Etiquette has yet to catch up to the setting.

“All cubicles do is fuel rage—especially if the transformation to cubicles is not accompanied by civility training,” says Giovinella Gonthier in Rude Awakenings: Overcoming the Civility Crisis in the Workplace ...