[sp4rki]

I agree with huggyface. The parent post was ridden with angry sentiments by the original poster. In my case, I consider good manners towards all the patrons to keep your phone in silence/vibrate in a restaurant/movie theater/bar because it might impact the ambient slash "moment" of other people that surround you. That doesn't mean I'm not taking a call if I deem it important, and depending on the place I might go outside to take said call. I might even need to keep my phone on the table to actually notice the call because of the noise inherent on some types of businesses.

Browsing Facebook while having dinner with someone is very offensive, I agree. It is also offensive to get "angry" because I took a call from my neighbor telling me that my grandma fell on the stairs, my work because the servers imploded and we're loosing thousands of dollars a minute, or my brother calling to tell me his girlfriend said yes to his marriage proposal.

My family, livelihood, and friends are all going to be more important to me than someone's arbitrary definition of table/movie-theater manners. I'll take steps to minimize the amount of inconvenience caused by having to be reachable during such events, but I will not apologize (actually I will as a courtesy, apples to oranges I guess) to having to interrupt whatever small talk I'm having because I got a call I deem more important.

It's your prerogative to not go out with people like me I suppose, but guess what, it would be mine to not go out with people that believe they're so much more important than other people's needs and wants.