I’ve had a cellular since I was 17. My parents got me one cheap (because my dad has worked for Sprint for 200 years) and I used it to call to tell them when I’d be home because I didn’t have a curfew if I called.
I used it for long distance in college, mostly, but it stayed turned off in my desk most of the time.
I got a new one when I moved into my first apartment and it became my main phone. I had 3000 minutes and free long distance, so I could keep up with my friends in their various towns across the country.
I have a shared plan now with 300 minutes and free nights and weekends. I use it for calls to my parents and friends. Ardred and I talk every day on it (do we need milk, etc) but those calls are completely free. We only have a land line because he gets it free through work.
My phone is ALWAYS on vibrate. If someone calls: I don’t have to answer and I don’t have to inflict whatever nasty ring I’ve got on to my fellow humans.
I have used my phone in an emergency. I was driving around with some friends in the middle of the night after seeing the Blair Witch Project. We wanted to go get “lost” in the woods outside of town. We drove to the middle of nowhere and this is when I learned that my gas gauge had stopped working. My half tank was empty. Fun! We spent an hour calling various friends (who were all out at bars) and as the phone started to die, we called the police to come pick us up. The cop thought it was hilarious that we ran out of gas because we were trying to scare ourselves.
I simply don’t understand the people who must answer every single call they get on their cell phone. I have a few friends that are like that. About the only ones I answer right away are from my parents. Otherwise, anybody else can leave a message and I will get back to them shortly.
I also get slightly irritated at friends who will interupt conversations to go talk on the phone. I would feel ashamed at myself if I ever did that. I would also feel like a world class asshole.
I’m one of those people. The reason I do it though Is because my cell phone rings so rarely that when it does, it’s most likely something important.
I too despise cellphones. But with a wife that works, two kids in school, only one car, and a job that takes often me away from my desk, it’s really the only way for people to reach when they need to. I use a Virgin Mobile prepaid, and I only have to put twenty bucks every ninety days on it. Speaking of which, Chairman Pow, I can’t know about other prepaid services, but with Virgin, the minutes don’t “expire” per se. You do have to add minutes every ninety days, but if you have fifeteen bucks left on your phone at the end of the term and you add twenty more, you’ll have thirty-five on your phone, not just the twenty that you added. It was explained to me that they have to do it so they can pay the company whose network they use (cingular, I think)
i know i’m really an only child, but are you sure we weren’t separated at birth? you sound like we should be sisters.
i just had a phone (regular kind) conversation with my mom the other evening, where i was discouraging her from getting us a cell phone. i did concede that such a device MIGHT be handy during actual emergencies, but i also asked whether there weren’t still ones available that were ONLY good for calling 911.
hate hateHATE the damned nuisance things. how does something rate as a “convenience” when it annoys the living cr@p out of 90% of the other people around the user?
My only phone is my cell, and this has been the case for over a year. No one pesters me, and I don’t really understand that complaint about cell phones. If I don’t want to answer calls, I turn the phone off.
On the plus side, long-distance is free after 9 pm and on weekends. If I need to make a call when I’m away from home, I can. If I’m expecting an important call, I’m not confined to my house. I can call people from the beach.
In my experience, the only slight drawback to this arrangement is that there are certain places in my apartment where reception is less good.
I had a cell phone for 2 months about a year ago. 99.9999999% percent of the time I wont even answer my home phone, so it really doesnt make sense for me to get another one.
Technology is only as much of a hassle as you allow it to be… apparently some Amish manage to get along fine… but I view it as an option… if you turn off your cell phone your turning off “options”. Your dying mom asking for help… your horny girlfriend asking for sex… whatever. Especially since payphones tend to be broken… and your location might not be known.
I do understand thinking its ridiculous to spend hours on any telephone though… I’m not defending people who chat away at cell phones and have huge cell phone bills to show for it.
Myself I love the freedom cell phones provide. If I have to pick up someone at the airport, and knowing that planes are always late, I don’t have to wait at the airport specifically. I know they can call me to warn me of delays. I don’t need to wait at home either. Being “reachable” means I don’t get to miss important calls… even if you do have to slog through a few useless ones of course. Finally its a great way of not getting lost, meeting your friends or warning others you’re delayed due to traffic.
Just don’t give your cell phone number to your boss or hated co-workers… ir meddling relatives.
I carried one because it was helpful on occasion with a job I was at for a while, but I did not carry it the rest of the time. I am not a phone enthusiast of any type. It is a basic-model prepay phone that (apparently) still includes text messaging, an address-book thing and automatic message recording, as well as a bunch of other things but I never learned how to use all that. I turned it on while I was at work or out doing work-related driving and if it rang, I answered it. Otherwise, I turned it off. The terms of the job were such that I would never be on-call. I gave a couple realatives the number for emergency purposes, but otherwise did not use it at all. That job ended over a year ago, and the phone sits, batteries dead, under a thick layer of dust… but then, I very rarely ever use a phone anyway. I am 36.
I see people walking through the store where I work, and they are constantly jabbering away, discussing every minute detail of what to buy. It’s 2:00 AM, and they are talking to someone else, somewhere else, about which brand of cereal or juice to buy. ??? I cannot fathom the need for this, myself. What did these people do before cellphones were so cheap? Well, for one, they shut the fuck up. Most of the time they suffered alone in their idiocy. I have a social theory that poor slobs who jabber on expensive cell phones constantly are not listening to the other person’s replies so much as they are listening to themselves being listened to. And I won’t even get started on setting ridiculous ringtones as an attention-grabbing device. I only regret the fact that back when cellphone company stocks were cheap, I was not smart enough to see that so many low-income people would spend as much money as they do on such a thing.
What’s interesting is that the spectre of Orwell’s 1984 was a government that could monitor you, watching you every move. A few countries are experimenting with public cameras, but in the US people pay big sums of money for home-monitoring services now, cars with OnStar can be used for surveillance and now we see cellphones that are trackable by GPS. The “all-seeing government” that was feared is being built piece by piece with consumer spending.
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Currently T-Mobile is running a promotion that $25 and up prepaid cards will extend the expiration date a full year. That comes to $2.08 a month, and is the cheapest possible rate available with the major cellular providers. T-Mobile seems to run this promotion always around Christmas (presumably going after the crowd giving prepaid cell phones as gifts), and once around early summer.
I actually used 1000 minutes one month. I had just moved and Verizon went on strike so I had no landline for two months. I used my cell phone as my landline. I had a long distance girlfriend, and I was looking for a new job. I just put my cell phone number on my resume.
Since then, I got married to the girlfriend, she moved up here, and I found a job. Now I use about 150 minutes a month. I mostly use it for domestic long distance and to sync up with friends when we go out since we can just shoot for a location, and we don’t have to wonder how long we have to stay at a bar until friend X makes it.
I have also managed to avoid owning a cellphone… until this Christmas, that is. My brother informed me he is giving me a cellphone and paying for three months’ worth of use. It’s a nice thought–he knows I do a lot of driving, for example. But I’m not looking forward to having it, to be honest. Nor do I look forward to the added expense. It will come in handy during an emergency, that is for certain. So I’m not complaining… much.
I rarely answer my home phone, either, and I have no special services on it like call waiting. Pretty much I view my telephone as “outgoing calls only”! Unless I am waiting to hear from someone, I just ignore it. Anyone who needs to reach me can either do so online or by mail. I hate answering the phone.
I don’t have a cell phone at the moment. I had one about five years ago, which could now probably go in a museum because it’s so bulky and archaic-looking. It looks more like a walkie-talkie than anything else. I never used it, and kept it mostly for emergency reasons, of which I had very few. I do tend to spend quite a bit of time on the phone, shooting the shit with my parents or friends. And that’s something I don’t feel comfortable doing in public, as do many of my fellow city residents or friends with cellphones. And my main aversion to cellphones, if I can even call it that, is that nothing’s really private anymore. People talk about the most inane and often embarrassing shit in public that I’m even amazed that they can flip their phone closed after they say goodbye and sit there with a bunch of strangers who just heard all about how this girl was so hungover that morning she had to stop and puke several times into a trashcan on the way into work.
Of course, I know there are many people who are circumspect and respectful of other people in their public cellphone use, and I applaud them. But they seem increasingly fewer and far between, at least on public transportation.
I really hated cellphones for years, and swore I’d never get one. I changed my tune in 2001 when I had a pain in the ass flying experience and had a heck of a time keeping in touch with my ride. And of course, all around me, people were whipping out their phones and calling people.
I don’t find the “I don’t want people calling me all the time!” argument compelling because I actually hate talking on the phone, so I keep mine on vibrate about only occasionally answer it when it rings - which it hardly ever does. I can go for weeks without using it, but it’s nice to know that should an emergency (or even an inconvenience) arise, I am prepared.
I am also very careful to not use it on public transit. I dislike people who yammer on their goddamn phones on the train. I also hate the teenagers who shriek to each other and the crazy guys who sing along with their walkmans. I wish everyone would just sit quietly and read their damn book. Okay, I’m done with that bit now.
Basically, it’s a convenience. If you don’t want one, don’t get one, but I just think some of these arguments against them are pretty silly.