Under the previous system one would ring a real estate firm and ask for Bill. For starters, because agents were constantly coming and going from their office, the telephonist/secretary under the old order filled an important role and was paid accordingly. She would recognise your voice and greet you personally.

If Bill was out, she not only knew that but would also have a good idea when he’d be back, for the very sound reason that he would have told her. She would let you know when and also add your name to Bill’s list to call – when he returned and, most important, was sitting at his desk and thus able to deal with your affairs properly.

Compare that with today’s disastrous situation. A low-paid Sharlene or Kylie will chant the firm’s name, you’ll ask for Bill and brace yourself for the “No problem” horror, uttered in hairdresser squawk (how in the name of God can pressing a button possibly be a problem?) and, frustratingly, she will put you through to Bill’s phone, regardless of whether he’s in or out. And if he is out you’ll never know because, unlike a decade ago, she won’t come back to you if the phone’s not answered.

So you call again and tell her you rang for Bill and no one answered. “No problem” is re-squawked, bringing tears to one’s eyes at the decline of our civilisation (I’ll wager that 2500 years ago in Athens, if one knocked on Plato’s door and asked for a quick chat, one wouldn’t be greeted by an imbecilic slave girl with sunglasses on top of her head chanting “No problem”, so I don’t think I’m over-stating the declining civilisation claim). Anyway, this second time you’re put through direct to his cellphone, whether you ask to be or not.

Now the last thing I want to do is to talk to an agent when he’s driving, walking down the street or out showing someone a property. I want to talk to him when he’s at his desk and in a position to deal sensibly with me. This is how such cellphone conversations end anyway, with Bill saying that he’ll be back at the office in an hour and will call me then, thereby making the whole exercise of carting a telephone about absolutely pointless. I always ask these types, do you carry a portable toilet about and, if not, why not? They respond that if in an emergency they need a toilet then they’ll find one. I say that if an emergency arises and they need a phone they’ll find one.

Then there are the unbelievably bad manners that accompany these curses. For some reason, the cellphone addicts all shout into them. I do not wish to listen to their inane conversations and yet these losers are ubiquitous in public places, raving loudly into them. It is a situation that exists across the world, and particularly on British railways, and has led to a number of assaults and quite a few murders.

There have been so many violent incidents on public transport that the British Government is investigating the practicalities of legislation prohibiting cellphone usage in public areas. A German jury sympathetically reduced a murder charge to manslaughter a few years ago when an obviously civilised chap quite properly rose and throttled a barbarian bawling into a cellphone at the next table in a restaurant. He struck a blow for good manners and if I’d been on the jury I’d have acquitted him, with a recommendation of a medal and a life-long State pension for services rendered.

Air New Zealand has set aside parts of its Koru Club lounges as cellphone-free zones, but time and again a vacuous bearded goose or fat woman (I swear I’ve never seen a cleanshaven male culprit or slim female offender) walk blindly past the cellphone-free zone signs while bawling into one of these things, and plonk themselves down. It’s less of a problem at Wellington airport, which has a cellphone-free alcove, although it can become a bit congested with civilised types seeking refuge.

My offices are cellphone-free zones, not merely with our staff but with visitors. However, we’ve had to “educate” quite a few people in good manners, which are always commonsense, yet something they clearly lack. Our form of education on this issue is more physical than verbal.

The word is out and everyone knows the rules but periodically someone, perhaps from out of town, will visit and in the middle of conversation an absurd ringing will interrupt proceedings suddenly and, to our astonishment, the visitor will unashamedly pull out a phone and settle back in conversation – although for only about two seconds, until either my manager or I win the race to get to the bastard first. In some cases we literally eject him, although another ploy is to get up, walk out and leave the office without explanation and not return.

There’s a constant stream of tradesmen and specialist servicemen in our office foyer waiting to see our property managers. They get one chance. Prance about our foyer shouting into a phone and their firm is advised in writing that any repetition will result in a ban on their company doing our work. I’m told that a common response is an apology, which seems genuine because the offenders always gratuitously add that they had hitherto never thought about how sheer bloody rude this behaviour is, but now, on reflection, they can certainly see it.

The good news about all of this is the Darwinian element. I know it sounds a bit Third Reichist, but building a stronger society by eliminating the weak, if an inadvertent and not deliberate gas oven-type process, seems to me to be a very good thing. There is increasing medical evidence, albeit disputed by other medical researchers, that excessive cellphone use causes tumours on the brain, which is excellent news, more so given that the brain’s possessor in such cases is plainly not using it anyway. There’s also firm evidence that cellphone radiation is having a detrimental effect on fertility, which is also splendid news in improving the gene pool.

I’m slowly making converts in persuading people to throw these utterly unnecessary and terribly misused tools out of their commercial lives. All report a huge lift in their efficiency, because they’ve returned to a more orderly functioning, in particular by spending time at their desk, instead of wandering about raving into these things in public places.

But with some exceptions, commercial real estate agents are proving hard work, although I made my first convert in 2004 when wellknown Wellington commercial agent Chris Gollins saw the light and abandoned his for work purposes. Yet when they came out, he was one of the most obsessive devotees. He reports a dramatic difference in his efficiency and, like most converts, whether with religion, smoking or whatever, he has become a zealous proselytiser, regaling everyone with emails about his new-found efficiency and the aforementioned ever-increasing medical evidence on radiation effects. Within three months of ditching the phone, for the first time in a dozen years he topped the quarterly poll as the most successful agent for Colliers, New Zealand’s largest commercial agency, with more than 110 commercial agents. He attributes this success to his new-found efficiency. I’m told he’s on track to repeat this in the next quarter.

It doesn’t especially surprise me that Gollins should be a forerunner in this respect, because he has always been innovative. For example, he’s the only commercial agent I’ve encountered who personally employs a researcher, and he has done so for some years. On the negative side, he has an unfortunate moustache that would be quite at home during Sydney’s Gay Mardi Gras or, continuing the Third Reich theme, addressing a Nuremberg Rally.

I am not being Luddite here. The cellphone is an absolutely marvellous invention, especially for emergencies, but as a business tool it’s a recipe for inefficiency and a huge nuisance for those of us dependent on constant contact, in this case with real estate agents.

Come to think of it, a couple of years ago I was with the same Chris Gollins, fishing in Cook Strait, when he was able to whip out his phone and call a rescue boat to tow us in after our engine failed. That was certainly an appropriate use. It was also memorable because, as we arrived at the wharf in Plimmerton, a large launch was just leaving containing about 30 oafs who lined the side jeering at us. The ovi (my plural for a herd of oafs) were front-page news the next morning, their boat having sunk in 60 feet of water near the South Island three hours later. Perhaps there’s a God after all.

The cellphone has also messed up commercial agency office arrangements. The pre-cellphone era bright secretary, recognising callers’ voices and about as likely to chant “no problem” as to chop off her head and eat it uncooked, has been replaced by the lowestwage employee obtainable, who diverts all calls to agents’ cellphones. Typical of this downgrading in real estate offices from competent secretaries to Sharlenes is the incident the principal of one large Auckland real estate agency told me about recently. Apparently he noticed on his telephonist’s desk a pair of sunglasses with conspicuously large lenses. Puzzled, he suggested they would fit awkwardly on her face.

“No, no,” the Sharlene type squawked. “They’re not for looking through; they’re for wearing on top of my head.” God help us all.

In early 2004, Sony Ericsson ran a full-page advertisement in The Economist showing a girl yapping into a phone while walking in the street. This new phone could apparently send and receive emails, play music, show television, mow your lawns, give you an enema, cook a meal and do a million other things. The advertisement’s message read: “TAKE YOUR OFFICE WHEREVER YOU GO”. I’ve got a better idea - why not leave your office where it is and actually spend some time in it, doing effective work?

As with everything, there’s a silver lining to all of this irrational behaviour. That is that to the extent we all have competition, to be up against such inefficiency gives one a huge advantage. Certainly I’ve noticed a strict corelationship between success and failure and the use of these things.

On my observation, reliance on cellphones leads to unthinking, sloppy behaviour. Consider this recent example reported by our New Zealand manager. He was going to Auckland, where we own some buildings, the following day, so he rang the boss at one of our major tenancies, because he needed a meeting.

“Excellent,” the fellow said on learning that Malcolm was coming up. “You’ve got my cellphone number. Give me yours and we’ll contact one another when you arrive and set up a meeting time.” “Why not set it now?” Malcolm quietly suggested, to which the response was genuine admiration. “God! That’s a brilliant idea,” the fellow exclaimed.

Malcolm, incidentally, most certainly does not use a cellphone for business purposes, but the story illustrates superbly the jumbled mindset that carting phones about develops. Organised thinking is abandoned in lieu of an attitude that anything can be done instantly when it arises. Any analysis will show it can’t and isn’t.

I said there are some exceptions and they are the very top agents, who now confine their cellphone use to outward calls and as a record of people calling them, whom they contact only once back in their office. They defend the need of this latter function because of the “no problem” screeching Sharlene factor – a classic vicious circle.

An interesting observation on the consequence of cellphone dependency for business purposes was made by a leading barrister in an Australian commercial property magazine interview in 2004. Until about 1990, he said, commercial property litigation nearly always revolved around arguing law.

Today it’s nearly always about arguing facts. He was referring to all this bawling into cellphones in cars and walking down the street and in other public places, instead of confining commercial activity to the office and, most important, to writing letters. So today, too often when a dispute arises it’s all “you said, I said” stuff, because there’s nothing in writing and it’s one person’s word against another, which places a huge burden on judges.

My organisation has had three court disputes in recent years in Sydney and New Zealand and won all in a canter because we produced hard, written evidence, while all these cellphone dummies could do was mumble about what they claim they said on the phone to someone. How could we lose?

The answer is we couldn’t and yet I’m viewed as old-fashioned on this matter. I’ll let the results speak for themselves when I argue that the cellphone is an inefficient business tool, although I reiterate, in every other respect it’s a wonderfully useful facility.

For more on business uses of Mobility, visit the Mobile Business research pavilion on iStart.

January 2006

Photo: Sir Bob Jones - Image enhancement was the only way we could catch him on a cellphone!

This article is an excerpt from Sir Bob Jones' latest book: 'My Property World'