New Rules for Girls Night Out

This post was written by Ashley Berges

For all the girls, women of all ages, whom go out with their girlfriends and have a much-needed night out, here are the rules (guidelines) to having a fantastic time and keeping everyone happy. As most of you remember, Sex in the City ended before Facebook, Instagram, Vine, and Hang w/ got popular. Had this been the case, Samantha would have been bitching about how Carrie is updating her Instagram while Samantha is trying to throw her a lavish birthday party. As most women know, updating social networking sites is important, but is it more important than your friends?

Even though we are out and about with our friends, having a blast, taking pictures, and having some alcoholic beverages, we must adhere to the GNO Berges Code of Conduct. We’ve all had a few too many and shared too much, said too much, did some crazy things, or just looked insanely intoxicated. In these situations, the last thing you want is one of your friends taking a picture and uploading it to Facebook for everyone to see it. Before posting comments, tweets, or pictures, you want to always get your friend’s approval. If it’s a picture, you want to be sure that everyone in the photo is happy you are posting it. Some of your friends could be going through a divorce, a divorce with custody issues, a break-up, they are a public figure, and/or they want to keep the pictures that go up on social media, with them in it, of high class and taste.

There are many employers that frown on employees even having a Facebook page much less posting certain subject matter or photographic material. Be aware and responsible when it comes to posting content about and of others. If you are their true friend, you would not want to get them into trouble or hurt in their day-to-day life. Just because you look great in a picture doesn’t mean everyone else does. You can always cut yourself out and post the picture of just you on your page.

Because of the technological age we live in, we tend to choose technology over real human interaction. Even when others are right across the table from us, we tend to get on our phones and text others who aren’t present. We are wondering how others are doing and wondering if we are missing anything. We have gone to the trouble of going out and meeting our friends and we ought to be happy we are spending time with them. We have to take a clear look at The Grass is Greener concept and put things into Perspective. Begin getting out of the habit of connecting with everyone except the people in front of you by putting the phone down.

A recently created game has made it easier to not look at your phone and engage with your friends. The Stacking Game is a game that women all over the world are doing to connect. Begin by stacking all cell phones; place the stack at the end of the table, and the first person to reach for their phone pays the bill for everyone. Whether you are at a restaurant, café, or bar, the person who goes after her phone first looses by paying for everyone. This game works well to reconnect friends and takes the mind off Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook.

Face-to-Face time and quality time is awesome but when you can’t get together, calling and texting is the next best thing. However texting has gotten out of control. The GNO Berges Code of Conduct is adamant about text etiquette. Text etiquette is important because this is how we communicate digitally. If you text a person once and they don’t reply, don’t resend your text for 24 hours. The 24 hour rule is crucial, when a person is busy and don’t have time to text you back, when you keep texting they may begin to get angry, get offended, think you don’t care about their work schedule, and/or they begin to ignore you all together and eventually cut you out.

Extreme amounts of texting can be considered stalker like to some people. Be sure who you are communicating with and their style of communication. In 24 hours if you haven’t heard from them you can resend your text. Your first text may have gotten lost within lots of other texts. If they respond great but realize their workload and respond accordingly. If they don’t respond again, you may want to reconsider how close you are to this person and or give it a minute/breather and let them come to you.

Remember, there is no need to use ALL CAPS when texting another person. It should only be for a very big deal and if it’s that big of a deal you should pick up the phone and tell them yourself. Put an end to group texting. Group texting is an easy way to do something and usually the easy way is not very good-it’s just easy. Take the time to text each person individually. Obviously you really don’t want to say the same exact thing to everyone, so don’t! Use group texts sparingly and only do it for minimal information.

The GNO Berges Code of Conduct are good guidelines to keep and grow lasting and quality relationships. Connecting in person, by phone, or texting is an important aspect of our lives and has a unique formulation that provides happiness and stability. Remember to use social media to enhance your life not to take away from it!