New meaning of potty mouth

Taking care of phone business while you're taking care of bathroom business is enough to make an etiquette expert shudder.

"Ugh," says Barbara Pachter, author of "The Jerk With the Cell Phone: A Survival Guide for the Rest of Us." "Cell phones may be everywhere but you need to be aware of where you are when you're talking and how it impacts others. The other person on the line doesn't need to hear your bodily noises."

Cell phones are so pervasive it should come as no surprise that there is a National Cell Phone Etiquette Month, which just happens to be July.

According to a 2006 survey conducted by Harris Interactive, 38 percent of American cell phone users think it's acceptable to talk on their phone in the restroom, a steep drop from the 62 percent who felt that way in 2003.

Because most people have cell phones, they feel pressured to take calls anywhere, anytime, Pachter says. But that's not necessary.

"If you carry it with you, people think you're available," Pachter says. "But you don't have to answer it."

Local financial adviser Steven Budin always has his cell phone with him and conducts business around the clock sometimes. But he won't talk in the restroom. It sends the wrong message, which could harm a businessperson's image, he says.

"How would you feel if you were on the phone and you heard a toilet flush? I wouldn't think I was all that important," he says. "I definitely wouldn't want to be on the other end."

It's hard to say why some people think phone talk in the restroom is fine, Pachter says; it could be an overall erosion of good manners that seems to go hand in hand with the advancement of technology.

As you might expect, cell phone salesman William Hawkins, 24, has a different point of view about chatting on the phone in the loo.

"I don't find it to be rude, at all," says Hawkins, who works for Wireless Champs, a cell phone kiosk in the Galleria at Sunset mall. (For the record, he draws the line at yakking on the phone in a movie theater.)

Hawkins' co-worker, Cody Sakoman, 22, takes calls in the restroom, but he gives a warning beforehand.

"I think it's a personal preference," he explains, adding that rarely does the other person on the line have a problem with talking to him while he's indisposed.

Pachter says there may be a generational factor at work here. But that wouldn't explain another of Hawkins' co-workers, Michael Parish, 21. He says he probably has used a cell phone in the restroom, but doesn't make it a habit because he thinks it's kind of gross.

"I don't want to hear you going to the bathroom on the phone. I hang up on my sister when she does it," Parish says.

Chrissy Gaza, 23, is of two minds on the subject. She'll talk to a close friend in her home bathroom but not in public. "There's a warning. I say, 'I'm going to the bathroom now but keep talking,' " she says.

Everyone else is off limits. "I wouldn't go calling my work and go pee or anything, that's weird. It's awkward in public. I like to go to the bathroom in quiet," she says.

Unless it's an emergency, taking a call in the restroom is unprofessional, says Toni Grant, owner of the Etiquette School of Nevada. Plus, you never know who's in the stall next to you.

Once, Grant was in the restroom at a downtown hotel and heard a woman in a stall talking on the phone. She was gossiping about her doctor, who happened to be Grant's doctor.

"I wanted to listen but at the same time, it was gossip and I didn't want to hear. I was turned off at first, then I was intrigued by it," Grant says. "It just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. That could be anybody; you just have to be very careful when you're on your cell phone."

The biggest lesson in etiquette, experts say, is that if your cell phone rings in the restroom, let it go to voice mail.