Sheesh, people. Seriously! I’m sure that in small offices New Yorkers know everybody too - I just thought that when I said “elevator” people would assume I meant the kind of building where everybody works for a hundred different companies and doesn’t know anybody else at all, which is a different social dynamic from what I was describing!
Boy, those New Yorkers sure are thin skinned…
You’re not yelling loud enough.
So, Zsofia, if the woman were not on her phone but instead was listening to her MP3 player or reading a book and didn’t engage with you to say hi or make small talk, would that be rude, in your opinion?
I’m not seeing this at all. The two people who are actually part of the conversation are doing fine either way. The only inconvenience in a cell-phone conversation is to eavesdroppers who find they can’t listen in.
So, to sum up what you said: everybody knows everybody, except that you don’t know the girl in question at all, which is OK because her co-workers - unique among all offices in your building - are totally interchangeable to you and therefore not part of the “everybody knows everybody” rule …
But SHE’S the one being rude?
Here’s my take: you can’t be bothered to know her name. She can’t be bothered to nod and acknowlege your presence. Why should your feathers be ruffled now?
Exactly. I’m not sure why people like Little Nemo don’t understand this - it seems obvious to me. Maybe that’s why people are as rude as they are on cellphones - I take my cell calls off to the side and privately; I don’t just walk around blatting as loud as I like on a cellphone.
It’s a library. There’s a PR department that’s kind of insular and has a revolving cast of girls who all look alike. Plus, I’m bad with names. I’d nod at her in the grocery store. That sort of thing.
But when your wedged in an elevator your pretty much forced to listen to a cell phone conversation, and as others have pointed out HALF of it, which is even more irrititating. And then you’ve got the whole possible “its the kinda conversation I’d rather not hear thank you very much”.
I don’t get the rudeness, either. Why should it bother me that I’m only hearing half a conversation? How do you people stand public transportation? What gets me a little bit is when I see people seemingly talking to themselves using those Bluetooth headsets. That’s a bit unnerving. First time I saw it, I just thought I was witness to somebody finally just losing their shit. But being on a phone in a public place? As long as you’re not dividing your attention between the phone and interacting with a human being in a business transaction, or screaming into it like you’re trying to talk to somebody across a crowded room, I really don’t see the big deal.
From one “Z” to another … 
Thanks for the clarification, Zweisamkeit. That was better phrased than some others put it.
That is why, when I’m subjected to that, I tap the offender on the shoulder and say “excuse me, your end of this conversation is so fascinating, I’d like to hear the other half as well, would please turn on your speaker-phone function? Thank you.”
spark240 has done a nice job of describing why a single person talking on a cellphone is different than two people quietly conversing. If you don’t see it, maybe it isn’t different to you; it definitely is to me. They act differently, and they invoke a different response in me.
And if she had been talking to another person you wouldn’t have been “forced” to listen? People have conversations in public places all the time. It’s not unnatural behavior.
What difference does it make if they’re having a conversation face to face or over a telephone? If anything, a telephone conversation is less distracting - it’s only half the dialogue.
The only people I can see being annoyed about a telephone conversation are frustrated eavesdroppers and people who dislike cellphones on principle.
The Master speaks. (See “The Rules,” pp. 244-45)
No, it’s actually more distracting.
For centuries and centuries of human existence, if another person was in your sphere of awareness, there was one of only three possibilities:
-
He/she is talking to you
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He/she is talking to someone else (who is also within your sphere of awareness)
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He/she is not talking at all
“Eavesdropping” on a conversation that falls into category #2 is not the issue. We all have the ability to “tune out” conversations that are going on around us that don’t involve us.
But this doesn’t mean we’re unaware that they’re taking place. We hear, at a near-subliminal level, the rise and fall of the cadence of the voices involved, the pauses as one person stops speaking and another person begins, etc.
If someone raises his or her voice in anger in the course of one of these conversations, or even switches to a very different inflection without changing the decibel level, that conversation suddenly switches from background noise to something that captures our attention.
For those of us who’ve lived most of our lives in an era where only scenarios 1 through 3 above were possible, a one-sided conversation doesn’t follow the give-and-take pattern I spoke of.
A burst of one person talking, followed by a long pause during which nothing is heard, followed by that person talking again, doesn’t blend comfortingly into the background as before.
I can understand that someone who has never experienced a world without cell phones would find nothing unusual about one-sided public conversations.
I would hope for a similar understanding for us geezers who have far more years of experiencing it the other way.
Other posters have covered your other points. On this one I will note in AN ELEVATOR I CANNOT escape the conversation, one side or two sided. And you are most likely WAY more close to me than if I am sitting out in public having lunch. for example.
And for that matter, I generally do NOT have conversations in an elevator with an aquaintance riding along with me, pretending the other people are not there. Which, I think, brings us to a basic issue some folks have with people glued to their cell phones. The cell phone user is placing their emphasis on something/someone other than where they are at, fuck the other people around them.
Yeah, me being trapped in an elevator for a short period of time with cell phone jabberer is pretty darn low on my rudometer scale, but OTOH I don’t see anything particularly polite or considerate about it either.
This. If I’m having a conversation in a public space of any kind and I want to stay in that conversation, then that’s what’s going to happen. Social convention was hammered out way before mobile phones and needs a street adjustment. Now, as far as what I find annoying the mindless yammering of some reality-tv addled tartlet in those sandal boot things and last nights’ clubwear on the bus going on about the Kardashians makes me want to kick kittens, but rude? Nope. She paid for her space, I paid for mine, she’s using hers to talk and I can use mine to fart.