Rudeness

This afternoon, my firm hosted a very interesting seminar attended by about 100 lawyers. Before introducing the speaker, I asked everyone to turn off their blackberries. (I think it is safe to say that it is likely that every single person in the room had a blackberry or similar device; how pathetic). I did that for a few reasons. First, even if people don't answer their emails, the buzzing of the berries is very annoying, second, the signals coming from incoming emails mess up the audio, and third, answering emails while someone is talking is terribly rude.

For the most part, people complied. The problem is that many came late (in and of itself a rude thing to do).

After more than 20 minutes, a woman entered and sat down near me. I was sitting in the front row, right in front of the speaker. She did not stop emailing for the duration of the two hour session.

I guess they didn't teach common courtesy in her law school.