Cell phone gossipers can just go to hell
Having just returned from vacation today, I'm fresh full of bitching and complaining, ranging from poor hotel service to cattle car airplanes. But my biggest hassle when I travel is my loss of privacy--auditory privacy. People just won't shut the hell up.
You can't get peace and quiet anymore when you travel.
Why? Just like everything else these days, blame it on technology.
The way some people use cell phones drive me crazy.
- There's four reasons for using a cell phone:
- Coordinating something. This is a short and sweet call that sounds like "Meet you at the clock in 15 minutes" or "Half a million by noon or you get another finger in the mail"
- Making a business call. This tends to be 10/15 minutes in length and is a bunch of strung-together Q and A punctuated by a lot of self-important throat clearing and if talking to a salesman, seasoned by ghetto business patois. "Yeah, I'm down with it, dog..600 cases of sani-wipes, blue at 10% off list."
- Normal people talking normally. Most of us use the cell to call our kids, spouses and friends and give them immediate information, saving the details for later. "I had a good time last night, but I did get a restraining order."
- Using the cell phone to extend the range of mindless gossip. This one I don't get, but many people talking on their phone are exchanging no information at all...they are carrying on a conversation that they ought to be having in person. By "ought to have", I don't endorse the idea, just requesting a change of venue. "Then, he said that these shoes matched my eyes and I said, why they're not red...[sound of grande toffee nut latte being snorted out a surgically enhanced nostril]"
I saw one too many people lying on the beach, obviously staying at a very nice hotel and gabbing on their phones about television shoes, manicures and mutual friends. Why do people feel the need to do this? The worst part of it is that the kind of talkers that BS on their phone in pubic don't care if you hear them. In fact, it seems that they want you to listen in as they stroll into your little sound bubble at the beach or the bar or the restaurant or the park or walking along the sidewalk or on airplane.
This last piece is actually newsworthy. The FCC is considering allowing cell phone usage on airplanes. The interference issue was never real anyway, and technically all the airlines need to do is to equip the planes with small cell tower equivalents. The real problem is not technical or safety-related, but privacy. I don't want to hear the blabbers and their treacly, intrusive conversations in the air where I'm captive, can't always put headphones on to drown them out and am usually nervous anyway.
There's something special about being at a park and hearing the birds or getting some peace and quiet in an airplane seat. As a culture, we've devalued this right to be auditorally alone and we will soon lose it in every public place.
Posted on April 02, 2007
