COLOMBO : Recently I got told off at home for absent mindedly handing over my phone to a friend to look at some photographs. Really? What’s wrong with that? If you asked me before December 2019, I would have said nothing, but today as we live amidst a pandemic, we have got to be on top of our game and up our etiquette consciousness.
Here is a new set of etiquette rules induced by COVID-19 when it comes to handing your possessions and handling those of others. In the simplest terms, try to avoid touching or holding things that don’t belong to you. Similarly, try not to allow others to carry or hold your things. If there is no way out, here is how you should get about it during the pandemic.
I am using a mobile phone for illustration purposes only, hope you catch my drift.
Step 01:
Sanitize your hands and wait a moment for them to dry before taking the phone to your hand.
Step 02:
Hold the phone as delicately as possible and avoid touching the screen without permission. In fact, you should tell the owner of the phone to swipe or press on your behalf to avoid contaminating the screen (the screen comes very close to the user’s face when taking a call).
Step 03:
Avoid using air pods or headsets which don’t belong to you.
Step 04:
Avoid rubbing the phone on your clothes or trying to clean the screen with your hands.
Step 05:
Sanitise or wash your hands with soap as soon as you return the phone.
If you feel awkward about sanitizing before and after, here are a few clever lines to get you through it.
‘I haven’t sanitized my hands in a while, I should probably do so before taking your phone’
‘Hope I didn’t take or give any germs to your phone’
‘They say sanitize after everything don’t they?! Gosh when will this end.’
If you want to prompt someone to sanitize their hands before taking your phone, what you could do is wipe your phone with a sanitizing wipe or clean it in any way whatsoever that is prescribed for mobile phone screens and say ‘here is a germ free phone’ and hope that they reciprocate by cleaning their hands.
You can be more straightforward and say ‘I will sanitise the phone, do you mind sanitizing your hands before using it?’.
As I have said in my previous blogs on COVID -19 etiquette, one must neither take offence when asked to sanitize nor feel bad about asking another to sanitize. It is and should be a matter of mutual concern. Remember, at the end of the day, the idea is to stay safe.
Till I return with ‘Full of Etiquette’ next week, stay safe!
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(Praveeni Jayasekera is the Founder and Editor of fullofetiquette.com; she is a regular advocate on the subject. She is an ACMA, CGMA; holds a BSc. Economics and Management; PG in IT and Diploma in Social Sciences. She is employed full time in the capacity of Chief Operating Officer at CL Synergy (Private) Limited; a Sri Lankan freight forwarding company. She is an ardent fan of the written word and has compiled content for numerous websites for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, corporate profiles and blogs. She has experience in training corporate professionals on customer service and business etiquette. She conducts coaching sessions on etiquette for school children every now and then.)
