Licensee bans mobile phones for ‘stifling conversation’
Vic Long told the Bristol Post the ban was introduced to prevent a barrage of constant phone calls and messages, and customers spending time looking at their phones.
Long has put up signs up on the walls of the Ship Inn, Portishead, informing customers that mobiles are banned.
According to the local newspaper, the pub’s locals police the ban meaning Long doesn’t have to.
Oasis of calm
He said: “We ask people to adhere to the ban but we certainly wouldn’t confiscate anyone’s phone. The ban is enforced by my regular customers.
“If a phone does go off and someone answers it, they are soon quick to point out the sign on the wall and the ban.
“Normally, whoever picks up the call apologises and either tells the person they will ring them back or goes outside to take the call.
“The Ship is a community pub and I would like to think it is an oasis of calm for our customers, not somewhere they are constantly interrupted by calls or texts.”
Conversation dying
Long added: “I feel the use of phones in the pub stifles conversation. The art of a good old conversation is dying because of this new digital age."
He criticised mobile phones along with the ‘digital age’, and likened the technology to being like a drug to users.
This isn’t the first time a licensee has implemented a ban on mobile phones as in September last year Steve Tyler of the Gin Tub in Hove, East Sussex, did the same.
The bar had a Faraday cage, a metal screen used to block electric fields, installed in the ceiling of the site meaning customers have to go outside to make a call or text.
