I had a date the other night with a man who seemed sooo perfect, I thought I’d hit the dating jackpot: an architect, he was funny, charming, handsome, a sharp dresser, clever, and he smelled so good I could eat him. I was so excited getting ready for our date, I walked out the door without my handbag. (Only another girl can appreciate the gravity of this error.)

My dream date began to evaporate only five minutes into the date while I was mid-sentence when his cellphone rang… and he answered it. He spoke for a couple of minutes, and then didn’t even bother to apologize for the interruption, ask something like “Now where were we?” or otherwise acknowledge the interruption. Chalking it up to an emergency at work or something, I let it go and we carried on, until his cellphone rang again, and he raised his finger in a “Just one moment” gesture, and answered it! I began to feel as if I were hindering his ability to carry on conversations with other people while on our date, and I’d only finished half my drink!

As soon as he’d finished that call, the phone rang again, so I turned to the man on my right and struck up a conversation out of boredom. My dream date didn’t seem so dreamy anymore, and while the man on my right wasn’t the most sparkling of conversationalists, at least he didn’t keep whipping out a phone every couple of minutes, and he bought me another drink. Soon, I felt a tap on my elbow; it was the Serial Phoner, who seemed a bit peeved that I was doing something besides sitting patiently while he finished whatever he was doing on the phone. At this point, all we’d managed to discuss was where he worked (midtown), where he lived (Tribeca), and two of his favorite restaurants. Having now had a drink and a half, though, I must have lightened up a bit, as I didn’t take him to task for his douchey behavior with the phone. Instead, I tried to carry on, hoping (foolishly) that I could somehow rescue the date, although in retrospect, why I wanted to rescue a date with someone with no manners, I have no idea. It must have been the alcohol.

I was about to open my mouth to ask him a question when his phone rang yet again, and this time, the conversation went on for some time with him laughing raucously and having a good time. I took out my iPhone and pointedly played Space Monkey, thinking he’d get the message, but Old Clueless was too busy having a rocking good time on the phone to notice I was playing a game, so I called my friend Marie, who, lucky for me, was at a bistro just seventeen blocks away. Not wanting to waste being dressed so smartly, I left money for my drink on the bar and high-tailed it out of there to go join her.

When I arrived at the bistro, I was regaling Marie with the story about the buffoon with the cellphone, and my phone rang. Guess who it was? But folks, the moral of the story is this:

It’s rude to answer the phone when you’re with you’re friends.

Unless there’s some pending emergency (you’re a cardiologist, your wife’s about to give birth, a family member is on death’s door), when you answer your phone, the message you’re sending to the person you’re with is “The person at the other end of the phone is more important than you are,” and “This other conversation will be more interesting than the one you and I are having.” Unless there’s a pending emergency, SHUT THE DAMNED THING OFF.

I arrived home to two petulant voicemails and one mildly irritated email from the Thoughtless Architect; I wrote to let him know that I wasn’t interested in seeing him again, that I didn’t think things would work out. He wrote back indicating that he thought things had gone swimmingly, and he was disappointed. Now I knew that he was not only rude, but clueless as well.

Cellphones are great for a lot of things, but they’re inappropriate date companions. You have two choices: turn the phone off, or turn your date off.