Cell Phones
I was walking out of the Post Office earlier and this guy was walking in. In his hand a cell phone - set to speaker. I really don’t want to hear you talking on the phone, let alone the other end of your boring conversation. How ’bout just hanging the danged thing up?
While I’m at it, here are the other places I don’t want to hear you on your phone:
- When I’m out to dinner
- If it’s that important, excuse yourself from the table - keep going til you’re completely out of my sight - and out of hearing range
- Driving
- I know this one is tough since we all seem to need to talk on the phone - worse is when you are using your speaker phone and stare at the phone as if it’s going to do something Trust me, your phone isn’t that cool all it’s going to do is get you in a wreck - and that’s in front of you.
- Standing in line at the Post Office:
- So yeah, Jerry what we really need to do is - hang on a sec… yeah gimme a roll of flag stamps… Yeah Jerry, what we need to do… no just the roll of stamps… cash… Jerry, what we need to do…
- At the grocery store
- Hi mom, yeah I heard about Aunt Gertrudes goiter…. do you mind? I’m on the phone here!
And all that goes triple if you happen to be related to me. My wife(whom I love very much) had over a 30 minute conversation with her mother while the rest of us were sitting at the same table at Denny’s. A simple, “I’ll call you back when you’re at dinner,” should suffice - there’s nothing like being ignored for mostly random drivel. I once left the store we were shopping because instead of talking (or just quietly walking with me) to me she was on the phone. I don’t mean work conversations, my wife clearly has an important role in her job and I don’t become upset with those phone calls - she deals with disabled adults and their medical issues. But if you want to hang out with me keep the social calls out of my time slot.
Recently, my ten year old step daughter was given a cell phone by her dad (don’t get me started on that) and she walks around the apartment talking to her equally young cousins with the speaker phone turned all the way up. It’s not like the cell phone “speaker phone” accomplishes much. With an old fashioned desk phone I can have a conversation with someone and more than one person on my end can participate. Or I can blog or whatever… dust (yeah like I really do that). Sometimes it’s just easier to hit the speaker button and say hang on while picking up the actual handset but with the cell, it’s one more way to annoy those around and that’s about it… “I’m on the phone, can you turn off the vacuum cleaner?!” With the cell/speaker phone one is always holding it in one hand - inexplicably watching it as if you could see the other person.
My brother (who lives 3000 miles away) usually calls me from work. He’s a supervisor or something like that, working on airplanes, doing the overhauls and major maintenance. Sometimes more than 30% of the conversation is him in his broken spanish trying to tell someone how to do something… I love my brother, but call me when you’re not so busy - ‘k?
Looks like this is getting a bit long so I’ll chop it off here… next on cell phones: “Upgrades”
