3 hours ago
13
Name: Phone bans.
Age: Their provenance is considerable; their time is now.
Appearance: Groups of people eating together, talking together and laughing together, while also twitching slightly from withdrawal.
So this is specifically to do with banning phones in restaurants? Restaurants and bars, yes.
Hardly a new thing, is it? No. Ironically, a decade ago many fine dining establishments were unbanning mobiles, surrendering to the idea that people couldn’t be stopped from posting photographs of their food.
I suppose it was considered good for business. Not any more – at the Spy Bar in London, they put a sticker over your phone’s camera lens at the door.
What’s the point? People can just peel the sticker off. It’s supposed to work on a psychological level – to preserve privacy and allow people to enjoy themselves without distraction.
Shouldn’t a ban be more, erm, enforceable? They certainly can be. At Antagonist, a bar in Charlotte, North Carolina, customers are required to put their phones in a locked pouch of the type used to enforce phone bans in schools. At the Trophy Room in Phoenix, Arizona, guests’ phones are stored in a vintage filing cabinet during their visit.
Sounds like prison. At the Clink restaurant in London they lock all phones in an outside cabin, but that’s because the restaurant is actually inside HMP Brixton, where possession of a mobile phone is prohibited.
OK, maybe a phone ban should be less enforceable than that. Some places use a carrot instead of a stick. At Al Condominio in Verona, Italy, customers are offered a free bottle of wine if they surrender their phones before the meal.
Does that work? Apparently 90% of customers accept the challenge.
As would I for free wine. Other restaurants simply have a no phones policy, in a bid to encourage conversation and to re-establish focus on the food and the experience.
And the clientele are in favour? For the most part. “I strongly encourage people to give it a chance, and sometimes they don’t and they go somewhere else,” Antagonist’s general manager told the Wall Street Journal.
Still, it sounds as if it’s becoming more widespread. Big chains are now beginning to crack down. Pizza Express initiated phone-free afternoons last summer, and even Wetherspoons has drawn a line.
There’s no way I would go into a Wetherspoons without my phone. No worries – they just want you to keep it on silent.
Do say: “Take my phone, please. Anything that encourages human connection is worth sacrificing a few hours of doomscrolling for.”
Don’t say: “I can still do my podcast from here though, right?”
