I agree. There is nothing wrong with having a mobile. You are not a better person because you don’t have a mobile. I’m not better than you because I do have a mobile.
Some people are rude when using their mobiles, but that could be said about any situation, any piece of technology.
If you don’t want to have a mobile, good for you. If I want one, good for me.
If you’re one of the people ranting about bad behaviour rather than “evil cellphones”, fair enough.
I’m not a pompous ass; I just play one on the net.
The problem with call-waiting is that people tend to get distracted. I have little problem with a conversation being interrupted for 10 seconds once (second time is a call-back). I have a big problem with people who take the second call, talk for a couple of minutes, then finally get back to me. You’re just in telephone limbo - you don’t know if you’ve been disconnected, you don’t know if they forgot about you, you don’t know how long they’re going to be - you’re just sitting there waiting, and I truly do have better things to do with my time.
I really like the folks who just say, “Hold on,” and then immediately call-wait you without asking if you care to wait. These are often the same self-important types who take every cel call, speak loudly, and in general feel that being reachable at all times makes them, and their calls, all the more important.
As for pay phones: In any urban area, we’re now to the point that most of the few remaining pay phones appear actually to have been shoved up someone’s ass. Maybe if this were not the case, cel phone obnoxiousness might be a little less common.
As for the “damn people” instead of “damn cellphones” argument: most people’s egos are significantly larger than their brains. Cellphones allow them to demonstrate this to an extent that settles the question definitively for 95% of people using a cellphone in the situations described above.
Prior to the advent of cellphones and, in the previous score of years, beepers, this fact was at least kept under some kind of control, however rickety. That control is now gone. So, for the vast majority of those people whose egos outmatch their brains, much less their manners, we now have a device that allows them to flaunt their relative lack of both.
Phone Use in General
This is something that I’ve always objected to, and somewhere in the archives of the columns of Miss Manners is a column that agrees with me.
The phone in your home, wired or wireless, also does NOT need to be connected all the time, nor is it the case that just because the phone rings/beeps/plays Beethoven’s Ninth - opening notes or Ode to Joy - that you are absolutely required to jump like some Pavlovian dog to answer it. I used to regularly ignore incoming calls when I was a bachelor and I was alone in my apartment. I never met a woman capable of ignoring an incoming call, however. Somewhere along the way, the idea of the thing you are doing/the person you are talking to, in the room at that moment, taking priority over the fact that someone else wishes to interrupt that activity/conversation, got lost. I don’t know why. It’s by far and away the stupidest and rudest part of modern civilization. Even stupider now that the person can, after all, leave a message and you can get back to that person later, if you so choose.
This struck me as kind of funny, only because I’m a woman and every time my father and I talk about cell phones I make that very argument to him: he grumbles about not wanting to get one because then he’d be “always reachable;” I remind him that every phone out there has an “off” button, and that a ringing phone – cell or otherwise – is not a moral imperative; he replies “yeah, yeah;” and the next time I see him we have the same conversation. 
There may be a generational thing at work here. Papa Doug, who grew up the son of a small-town newspaperman in an era without answering machines, private lines, or even universal phone service, learned one thing and learned it well: Phone calls are important business. Always answer the goddamn phone, and if someone else answers, come when you’re called.
During my junior high years, when I started getting prank calls from some kid who was either a) a little warped or b) nurturing some truly pathetic gay crush, I began insisting on knowing who was calling before I came to the phone. This routinely led to yelling matches around our house. Because you see, I wasn’t avoiding some abusive shithead, I was shirking responsibility.
My dad still gets irritated now and then when I choose to screen incoming calls. I still have to fight the urge to sit there and face my “responsibility” to any idiot who tells me off. :rolleyes:
Note that last night on Mythbusters, they tested whether or not cell phone driving was as bad as (nearly) drunk driving. It was, or worse.
So- for those who would never think about driving after 3-4 beers- why use a cellphone?
Note that last night on Mythbusters, they tested whether or not cell phone driving was as bad as (nearly) drunk driving. It was, or worse.
So- for those who would never think about driving after 3-4 beers- why use a cellphone?
Note that last night on Mythbusters, they tested whether or not cell phone driving was as bad as (nearly) drunk driving. It was, or worse.
So- for those who would never think about driving after 3-4 beers- why use a cellphone?
Note that last night on Mythbusters, they tested whether or not cell phone driving was as bad as (nearly) drunk driving. It was, or worse.
So- for those who would never think about driving after 3-4 beers- why use a cellphone?
So, DrDerth, are you posting drunk or just talking on the cell phone?
A little twist on Q the M’s situation: a large number of people in our IT dept have company issued cell phones, for outages and emergencies and such.
A few weeks ago, the CIO decided to audit the cell phone bills.
He found that people were calling others in the department who where literally 20 feet from away, or in an office across the hall. On their cell phones. All day long.
It’s now been clearly stated there will only be emergency, firm-related calls on the phones.
Dude, I have A.D.D. It’s affected me tremendously throughout my life, both personally and professionally. But the worse thing you can do is treat your wife like she has some incurable, terminal, crippling illness. Myself and many people on the boards can and do live with it every day.
That said, get the fuck over yourself. You are in the wrong place to be whining like a little snert over an slightly un-P.C. statement. This is the BBQ Pit of the Straight Dope Message Board, and things here are un-P.C., like it or not. If the OP had been a direct unprovoked flame towards people with Attention Deficit Disorder, then you might have a leg to stand on. But for now, I suggest you tuck your tail between your legs and run home to mommy, because you’re not going to get much sympathy here.
Adam
Are cell phones getting smaller just an adaptation to make anal insertion easier? And since it’s being inserted analy why not combine make use of the built in camara for some in-promptu endoscopy.
Fuck you.
You’re as useless as tits on a nun.
No fucking kidding.
Nice job, though, LouisB. As someone pointed out earlier, the unintended irony of using a reference to homosexuality as an insult while throwing a tantrum about a similar insult is quite inspiring. Plus it’s quite the insult to me and every other queer on the boards.
Since we’ve discussed your wife’s mental health, do you have an excuse that would justify your use of a slur like that? Normally, stuff like that would just slide off my back, but man - what an idiot you must be to do it at that time.
P.S.: I have ADD, and I wouldn’t have construed the comment in question as insulting to folks with ADD in the slightest.
My youngest sister is only six years behind me, but she’s grown up in the age of cellphones. They didn’t become ubiquitous with my contemporaries until I was in law school.
She carries hers everywhere, and it’s on all the time. Even when she’s asleep.
Even though I no longer have a land line, I don’t take mine with me when I go out for an activity (dinner, shopping, gardening, etc.) Because I’m going dinner, shopping, gardening, whatever. I’m not interested in a phone conversation then.
Sis regularly tells me how stupid it is not to be “connected” all the time. Hell, she even answers hers every time it rings.
While people are on their phones, they’re missing out on real life.
I delivered a cellphone smackdown in the movie theater today. I was seeing Bewitched with my dad (yeah, I know) when I heard a little jingle behind me. I expected the perpetrator to do the Purse-Dive of Shame, in which you struggle to hit the “power” button on your cellphone to kill the insipid ringing as everyone around you can clearly see that you’re the idiot who forgot to turn it off.
Not so! The young woman sitting behind me, who looked about 13-14, put the little device to her ear and said “Hello?”
NO WAY, my young friend. I turned around in my seat, looked her in the eye, and said, “Excuse me, could you turn that off?”
She nods and continues to speak into it. “EXCUSE ME,” I say, a little louder. Her friend (boyfriend?) hits her on the knee. “Turn it off!” he says. She keeps talking.
“TURN IT OFF,” I say loudly and clearly. She mumbles “I’m in a movie theater” into the phone before hitting a button and putting it into her purse.
Ya gotta fix 'em.