Please hold: Businesses want to hear your order, not your call

How many times has this happened to you? You are standing in line and the person ahead of you is so busy talking on their cell phone their too busy to pay the cashier? Or how many times in your business are you checking out customers and somebody is on their cell phone not paying attention and they hold up the whole line?

Well, I can tell you it has happened to me on both sides of the fence more times than I want to mention.

But can you do about it without driving customers away?

This article focuses on businesses that are tying to deal with the cell phone problem but no drive customers away. Do you totally ban cell phone calls? Ask people to step aside until they are done with their call?

While it can be a touchy subject, take a look at both sides of the issues, look at some of the comments from this article, and if still in doubt, call other businesses and find out what they are doing.

One caution, if you do put rules in place make sure everyone has the same rule applied to them, nothing will create animosity more than one person allowed to get away with something when others are not.