Mind your mobile manners was the message on this week Channel 9’s A Current Affair, which featured AMTA’s mobile phone etiquette tips.

A Current Affair said some retailers were fed-up with their customers bad manners, speaking loudly and incessantly on their mobiles while in the shop and disrupting other customers.

Sinclair’s Pharmacy in Camden has gone one stop further – it’s set-up a mobile-free zone around its counter.

June Dally-Watkins, who was described by the Herald Sun as Australia's etiquette queen, said people had forgotten common courtesies when it came to using mobile phones and not just in stores, but also on trains and buses.

She said the way people answered the phone today was shocking, often with just a "yeah", "what" or "speak to me".

"All the yeps, yeahs and uh-huh. I am totally appalled," Ms Dally-Watkins said.

She said a formal "good morning" or "good afternoon" followed by your name was the only acceptable way to answer the phone.

She said the informal, rude and abhorrent way young people answered the phone could do severe damage to any business.

Ms Dally-Watkins, who has been teaching personal deportment for almost 60 years, said a simple "hello" or using first names in business was not acceptable.

"Young people these days are the 'me' generation and are totally involved in themselves," she said.

"They have no right to refer to people by their first name, ever. There is a lack of respect to other people on the other end of the phone. Those values of the past are ones that must be maintained."

However, RMIT University technology lecturer John Lenarcic said the advent of the mobile phone and caller ID had led to shorter, sharper conversations, with little room for niceties: "We are streamlining conversations and removing politeness rituals. You don't need an initiating greeting, you can just jump straight in."

University of Melbourne sociologist Dr Tim Marjoribanks said the advent of text massaging had left many people unsure how to speak on the phone.

They remind mobile phone users that people’s sense of personal space varies in each situation and people should be aware of what is appropriate. Mobile phones have very sensitive microphones and people do not need to shout – speak softly.

Keeping your conversations private is important because, to the great surprise of some people, not everyone is interested in what you did last night or intend to do tonight.