Are loud conversations on electronic devices on public transportation wrong?
I live in Boston, and it’s often simpler to travel from here to Manhattan by an Amtrak train rather than fly. The train involves fewer changes and less waiting around. It also gives me a concentrated 3.5 to 4 hours of reading, napping or catching up on email since the Amtrak Wi-Fi is generally pretty reliable.
The Amtrak Wi-Fi is so reliable that several others who were traveling on the train broke out their laptops and phones and used the journey as an extension of their workspace. That seems smart and productive, although some phone conversations could sometimes grow loud and distracting.
I hadn’t purchased tickets for the quiet car or business class on Amtrak, so such conversations were to be expected. Amtrak rules though are that these conversations must be one-sided and require passengers to use earbuds or headphones if they are going to talk on their phones or do video calls.
Again, it may be distracting, but there is nothing wrong with someone using their phone or talking while on the train as long as they aren’t deliberately trying to be rude or obnoxious to fellow passengers. There is, however, an exception that should be considered by any passenger doing business while on the train. My observations are based on my most recent train trip from Boston to New York City.
For most of the trip, a passenger had her laptop out and engaged in business via FaceTime or cellphone throughout. All well and good and something I could have avoided had I tried to grab a seat in the quiet car.
Where this passenger crossed a line, however, was when she was speaking to a colleague or supervisor to register complaints about a colleague. Most of these complaints had to do with that colleague making the passenger feel dismissed or not listened to. That’s OK, too. What’s not OK is that the passenger mentioned the colleague by name – and by full name, presumably because there were others who shared the same first name, and then by name repeatedly through the elongated airing of grievances.
The passenger had to have known we could all hear her. What the passenger didn’t know was if any of us knew the person about whom she was complaining or if we worked for the same company or if we were customers. If the passenger wanted to register such complaints, the right thing would have been to make sure they did so in a way that did not risk violating the privacy of the person about whom they were leveling the complaints.
Even though we can stay connected far more easily now than in the past, I believe that some conversations are better had in private and ideally in person. My aggrieved passenger might have taken a more thoughtful approach by finding a time where their side of the conversation was only heard by the person being complained to.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
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