Should you edit your text to make it sound more human?

It’s a question I think every student and professional has asked lately. Whether they are looking at a draft written entirely by AI, by themselves, or in some combination -- they are asking, “Is this enough me?”

As the Wall Street Journal’s Writers Are Going to Extremes to Prove They Didn’t Use AI, points out, clean text is suspect. It’s no longer a marker of writerly skill, but of possible mechanization. Worse, given the squishy, non-deterministic nature of how AI creates text, it’s impossible to definitively prove that a piece of writing has been written by a human. As the story says, “It’s like the new McCarthyism. People are demanding proof of something that can’t be proven.”

But this is a blog about what you should do, not what you can do or what you might get caught at. So the question stands: What’s the right amount of “you” to put in your work?

We can derive the answer by looking at the issue through two lenses. Before taking a blowtorch to your story to add some char to it, first ask,

• Are you actually present in the work?

• Are you being truthful about how the story was made?

Let’s look at a few cases.

Case 1: AI is the writer

If you had AI generate your text but you think it looks too much like AI (because it is) and you want people to think you wrote it, the temptation is to go in and scuff up the story, adding a subtle typo or two or changing some phrasing to match what you think human style is.

You already know: This is deception. In academic circles, it’s called cheating. You were not present for the writing, but you’re trying to paper it over to make it look like you were. If you want the story to sound more like a person wrote it, write better prompts. Participate more. Don’t lie about provenance.

Ruling: Don’t do it.

Case 2: AI is a collaborator

If you collaborated with AI to create a piece of content and it doesn’t feel enough like you, the answer to the question, “Can I go in and mess with it so it feels more like me?” is generally, “yes.” The issue is not modifying the style or tone of the text. When writing with a partner, this is always a negotiation, and as the human in this particular partnership, every editorial call is yours to make.

The question doesn’t turn on editorial manipulation to add humanity to the story. It does turn on whether you are truthful about it, and not every AI-assisted piece needs an up-front disclosure. It depends on the assignment. If the assignment specifically called for “no AI help” and you are trying to hide the fact that you worked side-by-side with it, the issue is not “should I add more me?” but “why am I hiding it?”

Ruling: Don’t lie about it.

Case 3: AI is absent

If you wrote something yourself, or with minimal AI assistance, and you’re worried that the reader or editor might think it’s actually AI because it’s too clean — too grammatical, too smooth, too technically sound — should you make it even more your own? Should you remove some of the cleanness and add “character?”

The issue here is signaling provenance, not faking it. The story is yours. It’s just a question of how much you modify it to prevent somebody from thinking it might not be.

Can you do that? Yes. Should you have to? No, but such is the world we live in.

Before AI, many professional and educational assignments asked for an invisible craftsman. Your reader didn’t want visibly hand-crafted work, they wanted skilled work. But now that machines can create imitations of what only we used to do, making yourself visible as the craftsperson isn’t sloppy, and it isn’t vanity. It is adaptation, a reasonable response to the world that stopped regarding invisibility as skill.

If your assignment was to create a high-quality story that adheres to a certain standard, and you have met that standard, you do not owe the reader or editor a pass to add burn marks that make it look “distressed” like a farmhouse-style coffee table. Why remove quality you’ve worked so hard to create?

But you would be forgiven — by me, your reader, your editor or professor, and hopefully by yourself — for making your humanity visible in text that you would have been happy to disappear in pre-AI.

I confess that I find the rise of boring AI writing oddly liberating: It frees me from the need to hew slavishly to ye olde Strunk & White. AI’s baseline of blandness opens doors of expression. It’s a small gift of permission in an increasingly oppressive medium.

Ruling: The world has changed. You can, too.

What we owe each other

I started writing this blog, Caller Calls Back, to explore how technology affects human-to-human communication. AI, a non-human communicator, adds static to this connection. It raises the noise floor of the human signal.

So it is easy to understand why a writer might scuff up their work to say, “I did this, not a machine.” The rationale, the desire to be heard above the noise, can come from pride, fear, deception, economics, even joy. But whether it is right to amplify our humanity hinges on why we do it, not on the act itself.

^{Image: “Zen kör” by Chery, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.}

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Have you received one of these tone-deaf CEO AI memos? If so, I’m sorry. If you haven’t, I’m also sorry, because you probably will.

But this is really a story for the CEOs that may be reading this: You don’t have to suck this badly. You can write the “AI memo” more honestly. It won’t kill you.

AI Memo Worst Practices

Before we examine some best practices for the AI memo, let’s look at examples of things not to do. They are easy to find. The AI memo is an established genre that stretches from AI’s breathless introduction to today’s Fortune 500 CEO pronouncements:

• Do not threaten your employees. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today.” (Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO)

• Do not turn a pep talk into a fire alarm. “AI is coming for your jobs.” (Micha Kaufman, Fiverr CEO)

• Do not refer to people as line items or “lower-value human capital” when describing the impacts of AI. (Bill Winters, Standard Chartered CEO)

• Try not to invent a new underclass and then throw the employees you’re axing into it: “AI is coming for measurers.” From an op-ed that gleefully starts, “Two weeks ago I laid off more than 20% of my workforce.” (Matthew Prince, Cloudflare CEO)

• Don’t introduce AI as a performance metric. “Starting with the next performance review... we will also ask how frequently does each person default to AI.” (Kaz Nejatian, Opendoor CEO)

• Don’t imply that your employees’ current skills have always been inadequate. “[AI adoption turns] work that once took hours into tasks done in minutes.” (Jane Fraser, Citigroup CEO)

• And don’t cheerlead a technology your audience is terrified of. Read the room! (Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO)

The CEOs guilty of these memos and op-eds are not dumb and their analyses on AI’s impact are not necessarily wrong. That’s not the problem. The problem is manners. Old-fashioned, didn’t-your-mother-teach-you manners.

But I get it. A workforce is a resource, and CEOs answer to shareholders. That audience needs to see how a company is pushing forward, competing, optimizing, exploiting new technology, yada yada. One way to send that message is to write to the employee, but not really for the employee.

I propose a better way.

AI Panic with a Smidge of Empathy

CEOs: When you’re writing to your employees, write to only them. You can write a separate letter to your shareholders. It’s two different audiences, and they need two different things. Employees need clarity and empathy. Investors need confidence and market-appropriate aggression. These are not the same memo.

What that in mind...

• Address the only topic that really matters. Every employee wants to know one thing: Am I next? If you don’t cover this at first, nothing else lands. Paying rent is way more important than “velocity.”

• Write to the most frightened person in the room. Bad AI memos are written with a subtextual wink to the AI-excited early adopter. That’s a fraction of your workforce. The rest need something different.

• Give people something to do. Action quells anxiety. Even small steps. Link to training materials, things to read, forums for questions.

• Encourage screw-ups. Did you get everything right about AI from the start? No. So don’t expect your terrified employees to become expert overnight. Tell them that you will not penalize them for experimenting and learning.

• Do you want loyalty? (This is a real question. You may not. You may be trying to encourage employees to resign so you don’t have to re-train them or lay them off. But let’s assume for the moment that’s not the kind of CEO you are.) If so, tell your people: We will help you build skills that you can take with you, not just use here.

• Think of the AI memo not as a declaration but an introduction, as of a new hire to an existing team. It’s awkward but necessary. You cannot engineer away the inevitable halting first steps. People have to establish their own relationships.

The AI memo is hard to tackle because AI is disruptive and some of those jobs really aren’t coming back. But you can be honest without being a dick. Tell the truth, treat people like people, and resist the urge to make your investors feel better at your employees’ expense. It’s actually not complicated. It’s just difficult.

This story is part of the Caller Calls Back project, in which I examine the intersection of technology and etiquette. For editorial consulting, visit me at Catchphrase Publishing.

There is no room in this process for a spectator, much less a collaborator. And yet, with today’s tools, when I am at work, I can be mid-thought and see another soul pop into my document. I can see their cursor skipping through the file. Sometimes I can see them making changes to my text just a few words away from me.

What was mine has become ours.

The modern online word processor — Google Docs, Microsoft Word — turns the solitary creative experience into a collaboration. Often, an unpleasant one. Yes, collaborative editors are great at keeping revisions straight, removing file transfer mechanics, banging out a necessary doc for work that needs input from multiple people in a hurry. But the collaborative word processor turns the writer’s garret into a fishbowl. And the muse hates a crowd.

I’m not suggesting we revert to the previous era of emailing Word docs back and forth. That was worse. But to lessen the horror of public writing (or editing), maybe we can follow a few rules. Here is what I propose:

An etiquette for shared documents

1. Maintain distance

If you are reviewing a file that someone else is working in, and you can see their cursor, or worse, real-time changes they are making, you are too close. Back off to another part of the document, or close the file for now. Just in general, close a document when you’re not actively reviewing or working on it. (Writers: do this to protect your sanity.)

2. Might I suggest...

If time is critical and you must get your changes in right bloody now, at least put yourself in suggestion or revision mode so changes and deletions don’t look like glitches happening on-screen.

3. Leave a comment

When a document has a singular owner or author, and you have a suggestion, use the comment feature instead of making the change yourself.

4. Announce major structural changes

Making big changes? If you’re going to reorganize headers, change the format, or delete whole sections while someone else is in a doc, say something first. In Slack, in a comment, whatever. Don’t just demolish someone’s foundation.

5. Yield to the author

If you didn’t create the doc, you’re a guest in someone else’s kitchen. Act accordingly.

6. Announce yourself

When you are about to start a writing or editing session, and other people are likely to open the doc or are already reading it, announce your intention at the top of the section you’re working on with temporary and unmissable text.

7. Let it bake

If a section is clearly half-formed (notes-to-self, obvious placeholder text, empty bullets), it’s not ready for an editor. Let the writer finish the thought before wordsmithing.

8. Assume good faith

I stole this rule from Wikipedia, battleground of the largest edit wars in recorded history. To adapt from its primary guidance: Assuming good faith (AGF) means assuming that people are not deliberately trying to hurt, even when their actions are harmful. This is a fundamental principle. Most people try to help a project, not hurt it. Etiquette isn’t just about being kind to others, it’s also about assuming they are being kind to you.

9. Mind the fragile ego

Finally, when a writer says, “Sure, I don’t mind, go ahead and make whatever changes you want,” they are lying to you. The creative act, even for a press release, involves the ego. Be gentle with it.

The writer’s workshop, now open

Writers working on truly solo projects — books, stories, essays — enjoy the pleasure of facing their demons alone. Business writers and editors working on team projects and “deliverables” often do their work in the daylight of others’ opinions. It can be as terrifying as public speaking. So, please, as a matter of etiquette, don’t interrupt, heckle, or otherwise disturb the writer. They are already disturbed enough.

The words are there, but they’re empty. The work is complete, but the worker is absent.

When you receive AI workslop, what you’re really receiving is loneliness. You can roll your eyes. Or you can ask, how do I help?

Before Generative AI, mediocrity at least took time. Even a bad memo took an afternoon. You had to show up.

Now, you can summon a serviceable draft from thin air, in seconds. The first time it sails through without objection  — proof that nobody’s looked at it  —  the temptation to do it again becomes irresistible. Why make the work yours when no one cares if it is? Why waste the time?

Before long, it’s not even a choice anymore. It’s just how you work now. On AI autopilot. It’s a vicious cycle that kills pride and makes you feel invisible.

When you see workslop, it’s a sign. Someone is telling you they’re slipping away.

But AI is not the enemy. It is not the cause of bad work. AI can be an effective work partner, helping you explore ideas, refine thinking, round off rough spots. It works when you’re present alongside it. Not so much when you use it as a replacement for giving a damn.

The issue is not whether AI has touched your work. It’s whether you did. Whether you have breathed the spark of life into it. Thanks to AI, you can be absent and still send inert output that looks like work.

AI is a loneliness accelerator. When you receive workslop, you’re seeing someone who chose the absence. Your move: choose connection.

In the em dash wars, ChatGPT is winning — one machine-generated clause at a time. Professional human writers find themselves forced to take a side: pro-em, or anti-em. It is quite ridiculous.

(The “em dash” is the long “ — ” pause in the middle of a sentence. It gets its name from the width of the letter “M,” vs. the narrower one-hump “en” dash.)

Sadly, the current typographic palette does not offer many alternatives to the venerable em. The en dash is a different beast entirely, and neither ellipses nor commas do the same job.

What if we had other options that were looser, or more suited to modern ambiguity?

Here are a few.

Here on Caller Calls Back, I write about the etiquette of technology-mediated communication. If you are looking for editorial thinking with precision and purpose, visit me at Catchphrase Publishing.

Meetings used to be just for people.

Now, they’re full of bots that record, summarize, and stay politely silent while we meatbags nod along.

So if the bots are now listening, remembering, and reporting, can we stop showing up at all? And until we can, what’s the etiquette for dealing with them?

Do Bots Break the Social Contract?

We’re used to thinking of meetings as live, shared experiences, places where presence counts, attention signals respect, and tribal norms shape how ideas are shared. Meetings aren’t just exchanges of information. They’re performances, negotiations, subtle power plays. Bots can upend the arrangement.

Sometimes, bringing meeting bots into the room is helpful. Note-taking bots can free people to focus, and private, real-time bots can offer quieter individuals advice on participating, allowing them to be heard. Other times, the presence of bots chills the room, making people more cautious, less attentive, harder to read.

Has the social contract changed? Some organizations have already decided to officially vote for the status quo. This year, the EU Council banned AI assistants from attending internal virtual meetings. Was it an overreaction? Meeting bots, when used transparently and thoughtfully, can make distributed collaboration easier.

The challenge isn’t that bots might be present. It’s that we haven’t agreed on the norms for how to use them well.

The contract is certainly evolving. And not in just one direction; our interpersonal rules don’t all break at once. But we do need some new ones.

Disclosure

If your bot shows up as a named participant, like “Rafe’s Meeting Bot,” disclosure etiquette is: you’re covered. Everyone knows there’s at least one note-taking AI capturing the conversation, and whose it is.

But some bots don’t reveal who owns them, and some aren’t visible at all. Etiquette here is straightforward, if uncomfortable: You should disclose. Your colleagues deserve to know they are being recorded. Or some teams might just come to a blanket understanding that any meeting might have one or more quiet AI flies on the wall.

If you’re ever in doubt that disclosure is necessary, try trusting your gut: If you feel like you’re getting away with something, that’s a hint you’re crossing a boundary. Speak up and clear your conscience.

Disclosure is respect. Without it, trust evaporates.

Also, there are laws about disclosing that you are recording a conversation, or even using a machine to transcribe. They vary by country and state. To be safe, each bot should be disclosed.

I will add that most recording laws were written to prevent hidden surveillance and protect the assumption of privacy. The laws assume that recording is rare, deliberate, and potentially incriminating. Meeting bots aren’t that. Recording (or machine listening) is no longer exceptional. It’s becoming ambient, and the reasons for recording are often benign. Ideally, the law wouldn’t stop at whether a recording happened, but would consider how it is used, stored, and shared.

Practically, whether or not you’re running a bot yourself, you should assume that any meeting isn’t just happening in the moment. It’s being captured, stored, and possibly analyzed. That’s the environment now.

Performance-Enhancing Bots

Some meeting bots do more than just quietly take notes: they can influence their owners’ behavior in real-time. Granola, for example, has buttons labeled “What did I miss?” and “Make me sound smart.” Then there’s the AI that is specifically designed to help you “cheat:” Cluely. These are the meeting equivalents of performance-enhancing drugs. Do we need to disclose our use of real-time bot assistance?

Announcing “my next point is enhanced by AI” every time you glance at a live analysis isn’t realistic, and AI assistance can range from minimal (live transcription) to extreme (and risky-to-use) live sentiment analysis. Again, the best practical guideline might simply be this: if your AI boost feels significant enough that you’d feel uncomfortable if others discovered it later, err on the side of transparency. Colleagues who feel they’re competing against bot-enhanced participants might feel it’s unfair, and hiding the fact that you’re bot-juicing is bad etiquette, and likely to catch up with you.

Sharing Recordings and Transcripts

When a meeting finishes, any audio or video files, and any verbatim transcripts, should be made available to all participants. But what about notes, analyses, and summaries?

Different users’ bots will create different AI outputs, and some can be heavily influenced by their users’ custom templates or personal frameworks. There’s nothing dishonest about keeping these personal insights to yourself. But we do have to recognize that this creates information asymmetry: you have aided insights that others in the meeting won’t. It’s not necessarily unfair, but it’s worth being aware of a potential technology divide. The best outcome? Everyone has the option to bring a bot, and the whole team benefits. One-sided AI use might feel like winning, but it’s poor teamwork.

Sending Your Bot Instead

The next frontier isn’t just bots taking notes, it’s bots taking meetings. They’ll be able to deliver our perspective, ask for the information we want, and participate in discussions as (we hope) reliable proxies. The etiquette rules of sending a bot in your place haven’t been written. But when they are, they won’t focus so much on equality or attendance. They will focus on accountability.

Bot or Not?

It won’t be too long before showing up to a meeting without a bot will feel like showing up without a notebook. You’ll be seen as unprepared, or just playing at a disadvantage. But we’re not there yet.

In the meantime, the guidelines in this story are, unfortunately, hard to follow in practice, and harder to enforce. Anyone can bring a bot to the meeting without saying a word.

And if you’re using a bot, you’re playing a different game than those who aren’t, and not everyone knows that yet. Whether it’s recording, summarizing, or quietly advising you mid-meeting, your bot changes how you participate. It is much more than a meeting hack.

We joke about hating meetings, but at their best, they do serve a deeper purpose. They’re platforms for connecting, collaborating, and creating shared understanding. But as we increasingly partner with AIs, or delegate our presence to them, we’re not just changing how meetings work. We are reshaping human interaction itself.

Disclosure: This article was authored by a human (me) with assistance from AI tools during the writing and editing process. All editorial decisions and final content reflect the author’s intent.

My first programming job was creating a database on a 1986 IBM PC — the early personal computer that used the famous (in some circles), industrial, loud-as-hell Model M keyboard.

In an office filled with even-louder IBM Selectric typewriters, the clacky IBM PC keyboard fit right in. But this type of keyboard isn’t standard equipment anymore, and for good reason.

First, it was over-engineered and expensive. Today, most desktop computers and laptops ship with cheap “rubber dome” keyboards, in which a shallow key button presses down on little plastic dimple in a membrane under the keys, which touches down on a circuit board to make a connection. It’s a popular design because it’s super cheap. And some are not too bad to use. A lot of the world’s keyboarding is done on membrane keyboards.

Second, as I said, mechanical keyboard switches, like the kind in the Model M, can be loud — wake-the-baby loud, disrupt-the-Zoom-call loud.

So why haven’t these loud, clacky, mechanical keyboards died off entirely? Because people like them. Many (like me) find them more enjoyable to type on. The keys are heftier and travel farther, and it can be easier to get into a typing groove with them.

But that noise. If you got one of these comfortable but loud keyboards for the laptop in your COVID home office, and you’re planning to go back to the real office, you might be thinking you have to leave your keyboard at home, unless your goal is performative typing.

Is it ever ok, actually, to use a mechanical keyboard in a world in which other people exist? Can you use it at home? And, when you return to the office, can you take it with you and use it there?

You can, maybe. If you follow one or more of these etiquette guidelines.

Try a mat

Putting a layer of rubber or neoprene between your desk and the keyboard will prevent your furniture from amplifying the keyboard’s sound. It helps a little. Here’s a basic one from Amazon.

Strangle your keycaps

You can put little shock-absorbing o-rings into the keys themselves. This means pulling off the keyboard buttons one by one and sticking a little rubber grommet into the backside of each one. It’s not that hard to, and it does quiet things down. You have to make sure this method will work with your particular keyboard. It also changes the feel of the keys — how much depends on which type of switches your keyboard uses.

Get a quieter keyboard

Not all mechanical keyboards are clicky. Some are more subtle, and use a different kind of switch that doesn’t make each keypress sound like a rifle shot. You can look for keyboards made with Cherry MX Brown key switches for a good compromise between feel and volume. They still feel great, but they don’t clack like an old IBM Model M. On the other hand, if you want everyone within a mile to know when you’re typing, check out keyboards with Cherry MX Blue switches. Those are popcorn poppers.

Personally, I’m a fan of Das Keyboard’s products. I’ve bought a few over the years and am currently experimenting with a light-up Das Keyboard 5QS (sent to me by the company to try out), which feels great and has a mostly office-friendly typing sound, although not as quiet as the typical membrane keyboard on a laptop.

Software to the rescue!

For video calls, you can get software that will magically remove the keyboard clacking sound from being transmitted to the rest of the people in the meeting. This software can also cut down other background noise. You’ll still hear these noises, but other people on the call will not. It is a good solution if you work at home alone and like a clicky keyboard.

For example, try Krisp. Also, the major videoconferencing apps, like Zoom, Webex, and Microsoft Teams, are adding some noise-reduction features, so you might already have this technology in the app you currently use.

Sadly, software won’t help the people sitting right next to you. And yes, it is rude to hand out earplugs so your typing doesn’t bother them.

Keyboards should be seen and not heard

In summary, if you want to use a loud keyboard where other people can hear it, tech etiquette dictates that you make an effort to quiet the thing down.

This article contains affiliate links (which is an experiment for me), so when you buy or try a product by clicking on a product link in this story, I may earn a commission. My editorial judgment is not affected by these arrangements.

You want to reach someone new to you. Should you phone? Text? Email?

All the different options say something to the receiver even before you put content in your message. Let’s review.

First, you have your holy trinity of main options: Email, text, and calling.

Email

Email is generally good for starting or following up on a businesslike interaction. For example, if you met someone in a business or educational setting and have a question, send an email.

Text, SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, etc.

Text is the right way to follow up after a first date or a brief social encounter.

Increasingly, when you meet someone in a business setting, you may only get their phone number or text message address. If so, it’s acceptable to reach out that way to make first electronic contact.

Phone, Facetime, and real-time services where you can “call” the other person

Nope. Not for First Contact. We don’t call strangers for real-time communications unannounced anymore, unless it’s an emergency (to them). To make contact, use an asynchronous, text-based medium to ask if a live call is ok, or to schedule one.

If the person to whom you’re reaching has actually said, “Call me anytime,” then take them at their word. But note that “calling” in that context generally means a voice call. Making a video call is not appropriate for first contact with a person you don’t know, even if they’ve invited you to “call.”

Of course, these aren’t the only ways to connect with someone new…

LinkedIn

This is how you make the first move if you’re trying to hire someone or want their business… and you only know them from a LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn, between people who don’t know each other, is transactional. If you have someone’s email address, you might want to use that instead.

Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and other social broadcast platforms

On Twitter and similar platforms, you can send private feedback — a “direct message” — to a public post. In some cases you can also make first contact to a public person who is active on that platform, without attaching your message to a particular post. Not all account users allow you to private-message them if you’re not already in communication, however.

Broadcast accounts for notable public personalities often have handlers or social media professionals running them. Your personal outreach may not be one-to-one.

And be sure you know the difference between private messaging and sending a reply that’s visible to everyone.

Facebook

This is how you connect to extended family, school friends from back in the day, and old flames. But note that while you can send a message to anyone on Facebook, if you’re not “friends” on the platform, your messages will go to a separate inbox, which many people never check.

Snapchat

I’m told Snapchat is best for “discreet” connections and hookups.

Slack, Microsoft Teams, and other group chat tools

Team chat is great for connecting with another employee where you work. But check the presence or last-active indicator, if possible, before you try to connect, to make sure the intended recipient actually uses the platform.

The presence indicator on some systems (such as Webex) might also tell you if the person is in a meeting or giving a presentation. If so, you might want to wait until they’re not occupied.

Also, attempt to make your first connection during work hours.

Telegram and Signal

This is how you reach out to a reporter with a dangerous news tip, or you need to evade snooping for other reasons.

Final Tip: Respond in kind

If someone new to you sends you an email, respond in email. If they text you, text them back. It’s good etiquette to keep a dialog on the same platform. That maintains the tone of the messages, and keeps the content in one place too.

However, if you or the person you’re communicating with really does want to move the conversation (commonly, from LinkedIn to Email), move the conversation immediately and completely; don’t try to keep it going in both places at once.

Driving away from a parking space used to be simple. You’d get in your car, start it, put on your seatbelt, and go. It took ten seconds. Now, you get in your car, pull out your phone, check your emails, texts, and voicemails, program the GPS for your destination, find the podcast you want to listen to… and there goes ten minutes.

Meanwhile, if you’re parked on a city street or in a lot, there’s a good chance somebody wants your space. And they’re behind you, waiting. Patiently at first. Then impatiently. And then in a seething rage.

There is an etiquette of sitting in a parking space and not leaving. Following it will help you lower the aggravation all around.

The Ground Rules

How long can you rightfully loiter in your car? Does the person behind you have a reasonable expectation that you will be leaving soon?

Despite what the honking behind you is saying, that spot is not theirs until you are not in it. But it is the lack of information as to when you’re going to leave that causes angst.

The Wave-Around

The first guideline to good parking space etiquette is: Recognize that other people exist. If somebody is waiting for your spot and you’ve got tech to fiddle with, the polite thing to do is communicate that it might take a while.

It is appropriate — and kind — to signal that you have no intention of leaving soon. The arm out the window wave-around is acceptable. It’s certainly more polite than just sitting there, pretending the other driver doesn’t exist.

(If I thought my advice would reach a critical mass of people, I would institute a more granular signaling protocol: Hold up one finger out the window — not that finger — if you think you’ll be leaving in one minute, five if you think you’ll be five minutes, or a wave-around if you think you’ll be longer.)

By Cover of Darkness

You can also be a more considerate parking space hog by making sure your car’s lights are off and that your foot is nowhere near the brake pedal. Illuminated lights, especially brake lights, are a beacon to people who want your spot. When your reverse light is on it’s even more stark. Brake plus reverse lights mean, “I am leaving now.”

So, get in your car, and start it or open the window if you need to, but if you’re going to sit and play with your phone, make sure your lights are off and your transmission is in park.

Full Ninja

Want to avoid the awkwardness entirely? Go full stealth. Sneak into your car when nobody’s looking, and keep it dark and stealthy while you do your phone business. Recline your seat so you’re harder to see. No reason to give false hope.

When you do (finally) put your car in gear and leave, if there’s a person waiting for the spot, give them a nice wave as you drive off. A little friendliness goes a long way.

The road to smooth interpersonal communication is filled with potholes of lies. We keep our friendships happy with fibs like, “Sorry I’m late, traffic was terrible.” We blame external forces for the small injustices we inflict on others. In exchange, we hope for the continuance of otherwise happy relationships.

Is it right to tell a lie? Under most moral codes, no, it isn’t. But etiquette is not about the absolute right. It’s about paving the way to good relationships, and sometimes that calls for deflection.

Communicating through technology gives us avenues to a lot of excuses. Here a few small ones we can use to plaster over, or end, awkward exchanges. Of course, none should be used frequently. If ever.

When you desperately need to get off a call and you can’t find a way to do so gracefully

Switch your phone to airplane mode while you’re in the middle of the call. This will drop the call with a “Call Failed” error showing up at the other end, unlike just hanging up. You can blame this on mobile technology, if it comes to that. And if the person you were talking to tries to call you back immediately, the call will go straight to voicemail, reinforcing your lie.

The gentler version of this is to say your phone is on 1% battery and about to switch itself off.

When your mind wanders on a phone call or Zoom chat and you realize you should have been paying attention

Easy. Blame the connection. “I’m sorry, you dropped out there for a few seconds. Could you say that again?”

When you don’t want to reply to a text message right away

Take your time to reply, and when you do, text, “Sorry, I was driving in traffic.” Nobody expects you to be paying attention to texts when you’re in a tight driving spot.

Some phones let you automatically reply to incoming texts with a “I can’t text now, I’m driving” message. There’s nothing to stop you from sending this message manually.

When you don’t want to turn on your webcam in a video call

You should never have to turn on your camera, which means you should not really need to find an excuse to keep your camera off, if, say, you’re still in your jammies for the morning meeting. But if you want to foist the blame to something external, you can say you’re having network issues and are keeping the camera off to save bandwidth.

When you don’t want to be in that meeting at all, for that matter

Just don’t show up. Later, say your connection failed. However, since most people working at home have two independent ways to connect a device — WiFi and cellular — this fib may not pass the smell test.

In some instances, you can instead blame security features, especially picky, corporate-grade security gateways. For example, you can say your phone died and thus you couldn’t receive a necessary verification code.

If you really want to put effort into blaming technology, you can use tech itself to make a Zoom connection so annoying nobody will mind if you drop off a call. See Zoom Escaper, which can add noise or distortion into your call.

When you missed replying to an email

There are so many “the dog at my homework” excuses for not replying to an email. You can say you never got it, or that it went to spam, or that your antivirus check quarantined it. You can also say that you sent your reply and leave it at that, sending the recipient on a scramble to check their spam folder. (Don’t actually do that.) You can say your reply was stuck in your outbox or that you mistakenly left it in drafts. Almost any of these face-saving claims can work, although technologically not all are plausible for all email programs.

In most cases, the best excuse is to simply send your response when you can, with an acknowledgement of the delay, such as, “Thanks for your patience.” Sometimes, it’s better to just make the human connection after all.

Sit down with a parent who’s having a tech problem they want your help fixing, and chances are good that before the problem is resolved, you’ll be fighting. This is typical. Because as one expert in parent/child communication (my mother) explained to me, “Well, of course I push your buttons. Who do you think installed them?”

When we are trying to do tech support for parents, we get frustrated with them, and they with us, because there’s a whole lot more going on in the transaction than just troubleshooting technology. There’s something about reversing the leader/follower dynamic that sets everyone on edge. We become impatient beyond reason. Everyone seems to lose their cool.

But we want to help, don’t we? Here are some guidelines to your behavior that should make things go more smoothly.

Remember: Parents aren’t dumb

Technology is a language. You might be fluent in it, and your parents might not be. When you try to explain something or ask a question in a language they don’t speak, it will not make much sense to them, and likewise they won’t use terms you expect to hear when they’re trying to explain their problem.

So, first rule: Go slow. Ask, “What are you trying to do?” and, “What happened?” Don’t show off by using jargon. Avoid zipping through a complex series of moves while they’re trying to understand what you’re doing.

And have some humility about the whole thing when a parent doesn’t understand what you are saying. Remember: If you can’t explain it, you probably don’t fully understand it yourself. Look at the communication as a challenge.

Fear is powerful

At the moment you are talking to a parent about a tech problem, they may be scared. They are at the least frustrated enough to call you. They might be afraid they’ve lost their email archive or their photos, or that they have been hacked. Fear does not make one receptive to new ideas. First thing first, before you try to solve anything: Listen. Reflect their concerns back so they know they are heard.

You don’t have to “fix” everything

If, while you’re working on their problem, you find that your parent’s desktop or smartphone screen is a horrible mess of disorganized icons that offends your sense of efficiency, resist the urge to organize it for them. Or if you watch a parent slowly using a mouse and menus to perform an action you can do ten times faster with a keyboard shortcut, chill. You don’t have to try to make them do it your way. Everyone has to find their own way of using technology. Everyone else (e.g., you) has to put up with it.

No shaming

Saying, “I can’t believe you’re doing it this way,” is not the right way to help somebody. Your goal is not to make your parent feel bad. Don’t criticize them over their questions, problems, or how they use their tech. Sure, they may have spent the last 30 years criticizing your life choices. Let it go.

Full attention

Doing tech support is not a casual conversation you can have while you’re making dinner. Give the job your complete attention. If you are trying to do support over the phone, remove yourself from other distractions.

Respect privacy fears

This is the “Alexa tip.” Not everyone is comfortable having technology that can, theoretically, spy on them. If your parents unplug or turn off devices that you believe work better when they’re left on, let it be. They’re not going to become more comfortable with tech just because you like it.

It’s ok to fix without teaching

When you are trying to teach a parent to do something with technology so you don’t have to do it again for them next time, they might in fact prefer that you do it for them anyway. So do it.

If you do plan to teach them how to fix a recurring problem, write the steps down, clearly. Or be patient as the person you’re helping write down the steps themselves. This will take longer than you think, and the exercise might illustrate to you how confusing tech might be to someone not fluent in it. Once done, make a paper copy of these instructions.

Finally: Practical Tech Support Tips

There are a few common practical tips I’d like to recommend, which I have found make executing on the above tips a little easier:

First, for computer-related issues, use a screen-sharing app, like Team Viewer. If you’re doing support over the phone, it’s much easier if you can see what your parent is doing on their screen, or even perform tasks on their computer remotely. This is common advice and it’s solid. Screen sharing in Zoom is also a good way to give support, although you can’t remotely control a computer with it.

Second, if possible, set up your parents with the same technology you use. If you use an iPhone, it’s going to be easier to help them if they also use an iPhone. If your TV set-top box is a Roku, see if you can get them set up on one, instead of, say, a Fire TV (not that there’s anything wrong with the Fire TV). This is also the standard advice.

I’m going to go a step further and recommend that for computing devices — computers and phones — you just go all-Apple if you want to support people less technical than you. This opinion may be unpopular. But when I got my parents to switch from Windows to Mac computers, the time I spent on the phone talking them down from tech-induced panic attacks dropped dramatically.

Good luck. And be kind.

—

See also:

• Ronny Chieng on Explaining Technology to his Mom

• Wall Street Journal: Are You the Family Tech Support?

Signing off from a text conversation gracefully is more fraught than ending either a real-time phone or video call or an email, because text messaging is an unusual communications medium.

Here’s why: A text dialog can be either real-time (like a call), asynchronous (like an email), or both at once. One person might want the conversation to be real-time, while the other doesn’t have the inclination to volley messages back and forth like it’s a phone call; they might be busy and prefer that the conversation roll out between moments of their life, like an email.

The message thread between two people can vacillate between the two modes, sometimes seamlessly, over time.

So how does one get out of a real-time message thread that could go on and on? Do you write, “Goodbye?” Do you ghost the conversation and just not respond when you’re done with it? Or do you try to justify your escape, maybe with a little lie, like, “I have a meeting now, text you later?”

Because texts are half letter and half call, we need a way to signal a farewell that is half-way between the two. If only there was some sort of symbol that says, “I acknowledge receipt of your last message, but for now I am leaving this conversation and I bid you a friendly adieu.”

Fortunately, we have precisely such a thing. A thumbs-up emoji, 👍, is great for this purpose. In some intimate dialogs, you might use a heart, ❤️. These little acknowledgments are often enough to politely signal the end of a casual dialog.

For the time being.

For more Tech Etiquette, see Caller Calls Back.

What’s the proper way to sign off in an email? Unfortunately, there is no universally correct way. The best signature may be none at all.

Because:

“Sincerely,” is too formal.

“Yours,” is anachronistic.

“Best,” is often seen as antiseptic or rote.

“Cheers,” is weird unless you’re writing your email from inside a pub.

“Thanks,” can work, if you are actually asking the person for something in the email. It’s not a good all-purpose closer, though.

“Love,” of course, is all you need. But only if you’re writing to someone you actually love.

Confused? In a lot of cases, signing off with just your name is fine. Don’t overthink it, don’t overload it.

Speaking of overloading: There’s no need to include long, intricate automatic email signatures, especially with graphical elements or admonitions to “Think before you print,” or to “Delete this email if you are not the intended recipient.” It’s 2021. They’re not needed anymore. They never were.

Summary: By default, just sign your name.

-Rafe

This is Part 2 of the Caller Calls Back series on Farewells. Last time: It’s OK to Wave at the End of a Zoom Call. Next: How to say goodbye in a text message.

For all the ways we communicate, there are different ways to greet people, and different ways to say goodbye. These social norms evolve over time. By now we’re comfortable saying “bye” to someone at the end of a phone call. But newer technologies can still leave us feeling awkward at the transition.

For example, video calls. The farewell question really comes down to one issue: Am I a dork for waving goodbye?

Because, really, why do we wave? We don’t wave goodbye after an in-person team meeting in a conference room. We don’t have the urge to wave goodbye after a phone call. So maybe we should stop waving when we’re done with a video interaction.

Here’s the Tech Etiquette ruling on this burning question: Waving is fine. No need to stop.

We wave because it is natural. It’s the ingrained farewell we use after an intimate connection recedes into the distance. When someone drives away in a car, trots away on horseback, or yells goodbye from the railing of an ocean liner — we wave.

It’s the same at the end of a video call. The people we have been right up close to are now moving away. Waving is what we do in that circumstance.

Let your natural instincts do their thing. Wave. Don’t feel weird about it. It’s a nice way to cap off a call when you’re signing off, and looking around franticly for the End Call button.

Next time on Caller Calls Back: How to sign an email.

Inviting someone to spend time with you in a work meeting is one of the weightiest things you can ask. Time is the only resource that absolutely cannot be recovered once it is spent. So how do we make sure we ask people to share pieces of their lives with us as respectfully as possible?

Here are some tips for using work calendar invites properly:

Share the Agenda

Creating a meeting agenda is the ultimate sign of respect. It puts all parties on an even playing field and it makes sure everyone has the opportunity to prepare for a productive meeting. Not putting an agenda together leaves people wondering. That might be fun on a mystery date, but it’s not so good in a business meeting.

While you’re inserting the agenda, be sure everything needed to join the meeting (like Zoom details and links) is in the body of the invitation. This might happen automatically, depending on how you set up the meeting. Sometimes it doesn’t. Check.

Invitations Should Work for Everyone

A calendar invitation should be descriptive and useful for all parties, not just the person who sent it. For example, if you are Bob, and you send Mary an invitation to your calendar entry that says, “Check in with Mary,” it’s informative to you, but not to Mary. A better meeting title would be something like: “Check-in: Mary and Bob.”

Accept or Reject — Quickly

Calendar invitations should be accepted or rejected as quickly as possible. Don’t leave the person who invited you to a meeting wondering if you’re going to show up. Even a “Tentative” acceptance is better than no reply.

Bump Not, Lest Ye Be Bumped.

It doesn’t matter who invited whom, or who works for whom. Avoid rescheduling booked meetings.

Especially avoid rescheduling a meeting twice, absent an actual life-or-death emergency. When you push off a meeting more than once, you’re sending a message to the person getting bumped. You’re saying that they are less important to you than other people. It’s rude, it’s demoralizing, and it’s a toxic habit that tends to spread throughout an organization.

Video is Over-rated

For team meetings, video calls can be more productive than audio calls, due to the visual cues that help us communicate in group settings. However, Zoom fatigue is a real thing, so consider making one-on-one meetings with people you know into audio-only phone calls instead.

Bonus: It’s easier to get up and walk around on a phone call. And we need breaks from sitting in front of our screens.

Start on Time

It is just as bad to be late to an online meeting as an in-person one. And waiting online is usually horribly awkward, to boot. If you must start or join an online meeting late, alert (via text or chat) the other people before they notice you’re not there.

If you’re the one waiting for someone to show up, feel free to ping them shortly after the start time — like two minutes after. They may be having tech issues.

End on Time, Too

End on time. Better yet, end early, or as early as practical given the agenda.

Once the meeting is done, don’t forget to thank the attendees for their time. Try not to play the silly power game of saying something like, “I’m giving you back 10 minutes,” as if you own their time (and thus, their lives) just because they accepted a meeting invitation with you. Just thank them, smile, and sign off.

Streaming media and watch-when-you-want TV shows have changed how we talk with each other about popular entertainment. Now, we have the option to binge — to watch an entire TV series all at once, like a very long movie. I remember my first binge: House of Cards. Although Netflix released the entire first season at once, I told myself I’d watch only an episode a night. But there were nights when I was weak, and I watched two in a row. Once, I did three.

Who could I talk to about my obsession? When I went to work after a binge night, I’d have to gingerly establish a trust level with a coworker before I could discuss the show at all.

At my job, there were a few people who did watch the show in one epic weekend, but most did not. In the lunch room, for weeks after the show came out, we gingerly segregated ourselves by episode: People sat next to other people who were at the same point in the series. If only someone back then had Whataburger order number table tents to help organize the discussions.

Today, the magic phrase to invoke binge etiquette is, “No spoilers!” This is the proper thing to say to instantly shut another person up and pause conversation. After the pause, you can agree on the point in the series you can discuss things from.

Control Your Desire to be a Smartypants

But even this is a risky proposition. Once you are at the point where you are negotiating what can and cannot be talked about, you still have to be careful. If you are the person who is ahead in the series, you can’t ask level-setting questions that betray plot points. For example, you may not say something like, “Have you seen the episode yet where they tell you that the knife was from Jen’s kitchen?” That’s a question too far.

In fact, I’m not sure it’s possible to have any kind of fair conversation about a show when people are at different points in it. When there is an information imbalance, many people will instinctively play it for position, even if they’re not aware they’re doing it, or why. We all like being seen as informed. Even if we know in our heads that being smarter about the outcome of a fictional tale on TV is nothing to flaunt, we can’t help it.

But we still should try. Do not give cute little hints. “Oh, you’re a dog person, so you’ll love the ending.” What does that mean? How does that help? When you give this type of passive-aggressive hint you are actually trying to establish emotional dominance. It’s natural, and it’s also ridiculous. Don’t do it.

The only safe way for two people to discuss a serialized show when they are at different points in its narrative is, in fact, to not do it at all.

Get a Side Binge

Binging a show gets even more complicated when you have a parter you watch it with. If that’s the case, as enthralled by the series as you may be, the rule is that you cannot watch ahead. If you’re home sick and your partner is at work, you do not get to watch the next episode. You must wait until you can watch together.

The solution to having a restrictive partner binge is to also get your own “side binge” that you watch alone. You’re both mainlining Mrs. Maisel together? Good. Don’t watch it separately. But go ahead and allow yourself to get sucked into another show that you watch only when you’re apart. And keep it that way: Don’t tell your partner how great it is. If you do, and they want in on your show, you’ve just set yourself up for a very awkward dynamic, and you’re going to have to find yourself another side binge.

If you are separated temporarily (for example, if one of you is on a business trip), you might try to make an agreement to each watch your shared show while you are apart. I do not recommend this. Unless you communicate in real time and say, “I am starting this show right now,” there’s a strong chance that one of you will get diverted by circumstance and you’ll get out of sync.

The Spoiler Statute of Limitations

When do these rules expire? If you watch a show, especially a popular one, when can you assume that everyone who wants to see it, has?

One year. Why? Because we need to agree on something, and a year is reasonable. You still don’t want to ruin the surprise of a show you have seen that someone else has not, but you don’t have to tenderfoot the discussion either.

The whole idea of mass media, after all, is that we don’t just enjoy it, but we share it. At some point, you can assume everyone knows who Luke’s father is.

Getting the help you need requires discipline. Read our guide on The Parallax: How to talk to tech support about malware (and other hacks).

Wi-Fi, like electricity, is a necessary component of modern life. When we visit a home, hotel, office, or any place with walls, we expect to be able to connect to the Internet over a wireless network.

But asking for Wi-Fi is not the same as asking for, say, a glass of water. Using Wi-Fi is inherently anti-social, so there’s a tinge of rudeness involved in the request. With some forethought, however, we can at least minimize the awkwardness.

When to Ask

If you’re a guest in someone’s home, ask for Wi-Fi not long after you’ve said hello—even if you have to tell a white lie. One possible excuse: “Our sitter might need to reach us and I’m not getting any bars. Could I have your Wi-Fi password?” Better to ask right away than to wait until the salad is served.

How to Answer

If you are a host, you want this transaction to go smoothly. That means that you should have a Wi-Fi network set up for guests, just as you have hand towels in the bathroom for them. (You do have hand towels, right?)

Almost every home Wi-Fi router lets you set up a separate guest network to give visitors Internet access without letting them connect to your private devices, like your printer or your TV.

Since you’ll be sharing this network password with guests, you don’t want it to be obscure or hard to explain. It is good to have a very strong, possibly random password for your private Wi-Fi network, which you never give out. But for your guest network, you want to be able to tell a person what the password is. E.g., “It’s ‘Smith-guest5,’ that’s cap-S-Smith, a dash, guest in lower case, and the numeral 5.”

Or, if you can pull it off, make a little game of it: “The network is ‘JoshIsGreat’ and the password is ‘ILOVEJOSH’ in all caps.” Now you’ve lightened the mood before your guests have even taken off their coats.

Advanced Wi-Fi Etiquette for Nerds

Here’s another way to sidestep this whole awkward transaction. Put a sign just inside your front door that has the details on it.

If you have needlepoint skills, this would be an excellent use for them.

An even nerdier way to get your guests online is to create a QR code they can scan with their phones to automatically connect. Go to QiFi.org, enter your network info, and then print the code that the website generates. Put it under glass and frame it near your front door (sadly, this isn’t something you can’t needlepoint). When guests with smartphones open their camera and point it at the QR code, their phone will read the network information and connect immediately. Then you can go back to your normal conversation.

There are even WiFi sign options on Etsy.

It should go without saying that when you’re hosting someone, or someone is hosting you, everyone should limit the amount of time they devote to their phones. If you’re bored, I suggest making conversation. If you need a nudge, try a little game of Phone Stack.

The smartphone was the worst thing to ever happen to polite dinner table conversation. Or any conversation, for that matter. Today, even when we sit down at a table for the purpose of being together, there’s always the temptation to sneak a peek at our phone. When we do this, we are sending a message to the people next to us. The message is: there is something more important to me than you are, and it’s on the other side of this little glass screen.

As your guide to etiquette in this technological age, I’ll remind you here, and not for the last time, of the impact of even small gestures, like glancing at your phone’s screen — or restraining yourself from doing so. The best way to make another person feel good is to pay attention to them. The most certain way to make them feel small is to divert your attention from them.

Pick up the conversation, not your phone

At a meal table, picking up your phone has a cascading effect. You do it, and another person will too. In a group meal, you can quickly end up with a whole table of people who sat down together for what appears to be the sole purpose of ignoring each other.

Fortunately, the same ingrate youths who are likely to pull this maneuver have also come up with a solution to it: The game of Phone Stack. While I am not in general a fan of cute games — people should be able to treat each other well without crutches — neither am in favor of people being made to feel small. Thus, my reluctant endorsement of this game.

How to play Phone Stack

It’s simple. When you sit down at the table, everyone places their phones, face down, in a stack on the table. First person to touch their phone, for any reason, picks up the check.

The accepted rulebook for Phone Stack says that if nobody has touched their phone when the check arrives, then the game ends and the check is either split or picked up magnanimously by someone, or by prior arrangement.

Alternate Play

That’s the game as it’s been known since about 2012. But like any good game, the rules can be adapted to various situations. Try these amendments, for instance:

First Down Bonus. When sitting down at the table, the first person to put their phone down is awarded a drink (or other reward), paid for by the other diners.

Family Modifier. The check-picking-up endgame was designed by young adults who, apparently, can afford to eat out a lot. But Phone Stack works just as well in a home environment. All we have to do is replace “picks up the check” with “does the dishes.”

Smartwatch Modifier. If only muzzling phones was enough to keep us focused on one another other. It’s not. Today, many of us wear watches that bother us with the same alerts that our phones do. The easy solution is for people to put their watches in their pockets, but there’s a more creative way to play the game that adds a frisson of danger: Everyone takes off their watch, gives it to the person on their left, who then wears it for the duration of the meal. When a person’s watch sends an alert, the wearer may look at it, and show it to the watch’s owner only if the alert is an emergency.

This modification will go a long way to ensuring people disable unimportant alerts on their phones before they sit down.

Jenga Penalty. If, during a meal, a phone buzzes enough to knock the tower over, the person whose phone did the buzzing immediately loses the game.

Where's the App?

For a period of time, the Malaysia branch of KFC (yes really, Kentucky Fried Chicken) pushed a branded social app that automated the game. More a marketing gimmick than anything else, it had the odd merit of fighting the fire of app addiction by providing yet another app. But I’ll give it a pass. Whatever keeps people talking to each other is a good thing.

You can also cheat, or at least get your phone to help you win. For example, your phone has a “Do Not Disturb” mode, which you can configure to automatically turn off when you leave your current location. Turn this option on when you sit down for dinner, and your phone won’t buzz during it, and you won’t be tempted to reach for it.

The Phone Stack game is years old but it’s just as important today as it was when it was invented. We’re still slaves to our little addictive glass slabs, so much so that we often ignore the flesh-and-blood slabs right next to us. This problem shows no sign of abating. Over time, the alerts might get more subtle, but it’s likely they’ll get even better at knowing how best to distract us.

Eventually, we might end up with contact lenses or even cranial implants that are pinging us with little endorphin hits that are nearly impossible to tune out. I don’t yet know what we’ll do when this happens. I do know that technology advances inexorably, and that each advance brings new tech-driven behaviors with it, that require new social coping behaviors. As your Tech Etiquette counsellor, I look forward to being here to provide guidance.

Time was, a gentleman never left his house without a lighter. Even if he didn’t smoke, he might meet someone who did, and the proper thing to do was to offer to light their cigarette.

Far fewer people smoke today, and those who don’t can be forgiven for not carrying an old Zippo. What everyone does do today, though, is use a smartphone. And there’s a Zippo equivalent for that: A battery charger.

You want to be a hero to a damsel or dude in battery distress? Offer to charge them up when their phone’s running low. It’s one of the gentler ways to make our electronic age more civil.

Sharing power doesn’t come easy to everyone, however. Some of us like to hoard our battery charge. It is understandable, but it’s wrong. You wouldn’t withhold water from a person dying of thirst, would you?

When thinking about how or if to share your electronic reserves, follow these guidelines.

1. Share Power

Carry a small battery charger with you. When someone complains about their phone running low on juice, graciously offer to charge them up.

You do not have to carry every charging cable known to mankind with you at al times, but do try to keep cable adapters for common device types (Lighting, MicroUSB, and maybe USB C) in your briefcase or travel bag.

If you’re working on your laptop and a coworker is low on battery and asks to borrow your adapter, lend it to them.

To make returning adapters and batteries easier for the people you help out, label your equipment with your name.

2. Recognize When You Have Enough Power

Don’t hoard power. You don’t have to keep your device at 100% charge all the time. If someone is running low, offer to give them a boost.

Similarly, if you’re the one who’s being charged up by a friend or stranger, give the charger back when you have enough juice to survive, not when you’re fully topped off.

3. Don’t Block Access to Power

When your device is plugged in to the wall or a power strip, be sure you’re not blocking a free outlet. If you are, either move your charger out of the way or unplug it if someone else needs to plug in. Better yet, get a socket multiplier or one of the small power strips made just for travelers, so you don’t have to hog two jacks with your lumpy wall wart.

Special note for electric car owners: This applies double to you. If you’re charging at a publicly-accessible location, move your car once you have enough juice to get home. Don’t make other people wait longer than necessary.

4. Consolidate Power

A rule for families: Last person awake in the house each night looks for cellphones, tablet, and laptops, and plugs them in — and doesn’t make a big deal of it in the morning.

5. When Offered Power, Rise to Meet it

When someone offers lend you their battery pack, charger, or cord, do not expect them to bring it to you. Get up and fetch it.

6. Keep Your Power Under Control

When you know you’ll be away from a power source for a period of time, configure your devices to use less power: Enable low-power mode, shut down rapacious apps (ahem, Facebook), and so forth.

Also, keep your cables tidy. It looks better if, when you go to get a cable from your satchel, it comes out as a nice neat coil, not in a tangle with other cables, spare receipts, and the banana you’re saving for lunch.

7. Make Your Office the Seat of Power

Whatever the most popular laptop is in your office, put power adapters for it your conference rooms and meeting places.

Long story short: Electrical power is the oxygen of modern life. When presented with the opportunity to help keep a fellow human breathing, take it.