Lets list some stupid behaviors caused by cell phones.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Cell phones are very convenient and have become a necessity in the modern world.

But, like any modern invention it has caused some questionable human behavior. It’s not the cell phone’s fault. It’s user error. :stuck_out_tongue:

Let’s list a few of your favorite dumb behaviors associated with cell phones.

I’ll start. I was at the grocery store today and saw the typical modern shopper. Standing there slack jawed, blank eyed, and staring at the shelves with their cell phone glued to their ear. Absolutely terrified they’d make the wrong purchase without “instructions” from home. It’s like they left their brain back at home. It’s kind of sad in a silly sort of way. People are just incapable of making a decision without the cell phone umbilical cord stamp of approval. This kind of crap didn’t exist 20 years ago. You weren’t going to use a pay phone to figure out what to buy at the grocery store.

Early in my marriage my wife and I agreed not to nit pick grocery store purchases. I sometimes picked up groceries on my way home from work. If I got the wrong brand of peanut butter then that’s just too bad. I usually knew the brands we bought for the house, but I wasn’t getting on my knees groveling for forgiveness if I got it wrong. It’s a frigging jar of peanut butter or a box of cereal for gosh sake. It’s not the end of the world if I brought home the wrong brand. I certainly never bitched and moaned about the grocery items my wife bought either. I knew better. I didn’t want to end up permanently buying the groceries.

2

I’m guessing you don’t buy for anyone with several food allergies – any one of which will make that person want to toss their cookies, at best – and that such allergies weren’t as prevalent 20 years ago, either.

3

Cell phones, where do I begin? I hate them. The only good thing about them, I believe, is to contact my young kids and family. I may use my cell phone, maybe on average 1-2 times a month. I hate texting. I tried it, but it is silly, just pick up a phone and call the person.

Now they have the phones with all the bells and whistles, all kinds of apps (still not sure what an app is). They have texting, instagram, vines, etc.

If my kids tell me “to do it for the vine” one more time, I am going to break their phones (not really). Those of you who have young kids would understand.

And if I have to see one more stupid duck-face selfie, I will have to up my medication!!

Lady in the bathroom, guess what, you are not outside! You are sitting on a toilet, really?? Like I want to hear your conversation while you are in the next stall.

Also, 90% of drivers who cut me off, ignore the lights, and stop signs, are on their phones.

The worse thing, by far, is when you are standing waiting for a bus, in an elevator, in line at a store, and someone starts talking. You think they are talking to you, but when you look, they have on one of those stupid contraptions were they can use their cell phones hands free.

4

My daughter has allergies to food, and there is no reason to have to call her while I am out shopping. If you know the person you are shopping for, I would hope you already know about their allergies.

5

Taking pictures of your food.

6

Oh my God, my 13 year old will do this when we are out eating??? She will actually take a picture of her french fries, and send it to her friends. :smack: It is a bad epidemic, and I think it dumbs people down.

7

Just FYI, bringing the wrong peanut butter is a divorceable offense. :wink:

But seriously… you sound like you want to complain about people who like specific brands. Why bring cell phones into this rant?

8

I don’t give a crap about how people use their cellphones, what bothers me about the goddamned things is this:

  1. 20 years ago, I could have a conversation with a person across the country and they sounded as if they were in the same room.
  2. With a cellphone, I could have a conversation with a person in the next room, and they sound as if they are across the country.

If the call doesn’t drop, that is. :rolleyes:

9

She ever eat anything which she had no business being allergic to and got sick anyway, or anything that should have made her sick but didn’t? And you couldn’t remember which?

10

The inchworms in the grocery store. They inch along, stop to talk, pick up an item and put it back on the shelf and inch forward a bit.

11

The cellphone zombies - you see them in malls all the time, or staggering slowly down the street, phone glued to their ears or eyes glued to the phone, oblivious to everything around them. ETA: The biggest problem with this is the ones who try to cross a street while doing this. And the DRIVER is the bad guy if they run them over!

Or the text-blockers - the people who stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk or mall concourse to text. I’m campaigning to make it socially acceptable to body-check people who do this.

The biggest problem, of course, is the cellphone users who are trying to kill all the other drivers and pedestrians around them by using their devices while driving. I think the charge when caught doing that should be attempted murder. Seriously. If you can’t pay attention while piloting a ton of metal at high speed, you shouldn’t be doing it.

12

Most times it’s a variation on the cell phone user being oblivious to what’s going on around them, whether they’re driving or blocking people trying to walk around them.

Also texting while driving. I’m alarmed at the number of people I see driving with their eyes in their lap instead of looking where they’re going. (Seriously - if you’re going to text while driving, why not hold your phone UP so you can at least make some use of your peripheral vision?)

13

Another standing-in-the-grocery-store-line example: people who can’t remember their “customer rewards” number. They ask the cashier to “hold on a moment” and try to call somebody who might know it.

14

Oh yeah, cellphone use while buying things - people who can’t stop talking for 30 seconds to acknowledge that there is a human being staring them right in the face.

15

Heh. There was nobody behind me in line, but my gf asked me to pick up her prescription the other day. The pharmacy person asked me for my gf’s birth date. I suck at keeping track of BDs, so I called her and asked.

16

I do this for a living.

Small product photography on site at the store.

With a DSLR, tho, not a phone

17

I can’t count how many times we’ve been in a restaurant and seen an entire table of “diners” sitting there with their eyes on a small screen, oblivious to their companions. Is that what a night out with friends has become?

And let’s not forget people who have to answer their phones in the movies, in church, at a kid’s piano recital or a sporting event. Even texting can be distracting. Yes, I know, there can be emergencies, but you excuse yourself and leave so you don’t disturb everyone around you.

I dread the day when people can make calls while on planes. You know the airlines will start charging more for “no phone call” seats.

If Darwin was correct, the morons who walk around with their eyes on their phones will all meet a timely demise and get out of the gene pool.

18

The big problem for me is the degradation of punctuality and commitment, i.e. showing up when and where you said you would. More and more folks will flake out on meeting someone because they can call them where ever they are to say, “Dude, can’t make it” or “Gonna be late.” No one feels any pressure to show up where they agreed to because of the ease of contact.

19

Talking on the phone while walking the dog. Or better yet, two dogs. The dogs zig-zag across the road and you don’t hear the cars coming up behind you. I actually see people holding leashes and a phone up to their ear and picking up poop with the other hand, cuz they can’t put down the phone.

That’s not as bad as all the zombie mommies & daddies at the playground with their kids. One time I saw a dude on the phone follow his kid up on to a [playground] bridge, and he stood there on the bridge while the kid continued on down the playset, and then the kid went over to the other side of the playground and started crying and the dad was stuck on the bridge because he needed two hands to get down. He wouldn’t put down the phone. Some un-related parent had to tend to the kid while he figured out how to hang up the phone.

I saw a kid riding down the middle of a busy street the other day on a Razor kick scooterwhile texting. I can tolerate a lot of “kids these days” things and usually don’t react but this just had me guffawing all over the place like so much Andy Rooney.

20

I was on vacation a couple of weeks back–a beautiful day, driving along PCH along that wonderful stretch approaching Malibu, and my companion spent the whole time on her phone trying to straighten out some kind of billing problem. I asked her to please hang up and deal with it when we got to our hotel, but she wouldn’t let it go. The phone call lasted for over an hour, and still wasn’t resolved to her satisfaction when her battery went dead. That may be the last time we go on a road trip together.