It’s a subset that not many of you will have encountered, but I nominate Mr. Talking While In The Drive-through.
Look, bubs. You pulled up to the speaker. I greeted you. I even told you about the special. Now we are having a conversation, you and I. It’s your turn, the part where you tell me what you want. My feelings are positively wounded when I wait eagerly and find out that you’re already in a conversation with somebody else. I feel like I just found out that my new lover is married. Commit to me long enough to say “A number 3 with Coke.” If not for my sake, then for the sake of all the people in line behind you, and all of the other headset-wearing plebians who are waiting to serve you.
I can understand it if all I hear is, “Whoa, it’s my turn to order, gotta go.” But I don’t want to hear you DIAL and START AN ENTIRE CONVERSATION.
There are days when I feel like telling my crazed Australian boss: “Look. The phone is mobile. That means you don’t have to leave it on your desk. Especially not when you are in a three-hour meeting, and 1,534 people will ring your mobile number during the course of it, driving all of us mad from the constant repetition of the off-key theme from Swan Lake you have on it. And why, for Zoroaster’s sake, leave the vibrate setting on when you’re not carrying it? It sounds as if it’s sawing its way through the desk. To the tune of Swan Lake.”
I might do it some day. It’d be a great way to get sacked.
Erm, well, some of that might have been me this past week. The old cell-phone croaked, so I got a nifty new one from the cell-phone company. The nifty new phone works great, but it’s got a couple of extra buttons on the outside that seem to be there mostly to confuse the living shit out of me.
SO in the last five days, I have been guilty of sitting on the bus going, “Er, hello, can you hear me?” and “Is this WifeOfScruff?” and “Err, bugger, what’s it doing now?” In the last case, turns out I’d enabled the “voice note mode” and was recording the phone-call, including the “Oh bugger…” :o Now, if I could just convert THAT to a ring-tone…
I second the “assmunch talking on the cell phone when he should be ordering” gripe.
Almost as bad as the woman in front of me at the drive through cafe this morning who actually sat there and put the sugars in her coffee (or something like that, from what I can see from behind her) put her money away slowlysipped her coffee and just generally took her sweet ass time before moving up so I could order. Jesus Mary and Joseph! Is it that hard to move up 3 feet before you put all your shit away and do whatever the hell else you’re doing that’s taking you so long so the next person in line can order??!!
Sorry for the hijack, I knew it had to come out sometime today…
I was walking to one of my classes last spring when I couldn’t help but overhear one of my oh-so-classy fellow students yammering the following while within definite earshot of me:
Cellphone Chick: “Yeah, so we went out, whatever, it was cool… Well, yeah, there was a little screwing around in the car… No! I mean, it was, like, kissing - no fingers went in any holes or anything!”.
OK… It’s true that unsolicited explication of what goes on with the holes & fingers of you & your dates doesn’t rate in the top ten on the “Shit, I Did NOT Need to Know That, Thanks” list. That doesn’t, however, mean that it didn’t make the list; it damn well did. Shut up, you twat, lest you find your cell phone in one of your “holes”.
Fortunately she was able to feel the eyes of every. single. person. in. that. room. boring. into. her. skull. She finished that call right quick and put the phone away.
There are, in my mind, two valid reasons for having a cell phone on during a class/exam:
medical/other viable (the sale at Bloomingdales does not count. No, not even if those purple docs you’ve been eyeing for months are going 30% off. No, NOT EVEN if that cute blond guy will be working the register.) emergency
emergency personnel
How about Mr. Talk-On-The-Phone During Wedding Vows?
True story: my siblings and I were attending a friend’s wedding this past December when some idiot seated directly behind us evidently decided to leave his cellphone on during the ceremony. And this after requests in both Chinese and English pre-ceremony to turn the phones OFF.
Now, if you left your cellphone on (don’t know about accidentally in this case) and it rings during the ceremony, you’d probably turn it off, right? But no… this guy actually took the call… didn’t sound all that urgent to me, even though I didn’t understand a word he was saying. And it was during the vows, too! Grr… even the guy’s KID was telling him to shut the phone off, but noooo… he just HAD to take the call. Small mercy: he wasn’t LOUD about it, but still…
I’m at the grocery store now. Mmmm. It’s really crowded. Oh. Wow. Would you look at this? No. I’m not there. Cheese Tits™ are on sale. Should I buy some? What do I care? You’re going to eat the whole box anyway. You won’t believe this! There’s some lady here who’s wearing a … Excuse me, but I was shoveling dog shit in the backyard with a gardening trowel and I really need to get back to it. You can (and will) tell me all about your shopping adventure when you finish up and drive the <2 miles to the house. I don’t know. Should I get one box of Cheese Tits™ or two? <click> I think I’ll get two; they go pretty fast. … Yikes, that woman’s outfit … … …
It’s bad enough that I’m going to have to hear all this when you get to the house. Do I have to have the play-by-play as well?
The support group for cell-phone addicts:
“On-and-on-and-on-anon”
At live events. The theatre boards I frequent have ghastly tales of people who take calls during live performances. When I was at Broadway on Broadway last year, I was standing next to a total dumbshit who called someone at the beginning of every act: Guess where I am? Can you hear this? Do you know who that is? Yes, it’s an outdoor event and it’s free, but I did not come here to hear her screaming into her cell phone every five minutes.
The best story is the person who took a phone call and the actor came down off the stage, went up to her and took the phone out of her hand. “Hello. Who’s this? Why are you calling your friend now? Do you know where she is? At a Broadway theatre. What were you telling her? Must See TV? And it couldn’t wait? Bye.”
And the show went on.
There was also someone who, after the person next to them was on their third cell phone call, snatched the phone and passed it to the person behind him. Then the phone was passed up every row to the last one, where someone handed it to an usher.
Snow up to our wazoos over ice, horrendous winds, and the road crews aren’t out yet. In a 3 mile trek, I’ve counted a couple of slide-offs, several near-misses, and now Mr. Talking-and-Driving is in a pickup, yapping into a cell phone, driving with one hand and fishtailing all over the road as he passes on his way to somewhere very important, I’m sure. I hope he didn’t wear the battery out, because something tells me he’s going to need that sucker to call Mr. Towtruck Man to pull his ass out of a ditch.
some of that might have been me this past week. The old cell-phone croaked, so I got a nifty new one from the cell-phone company. The nifty new phone works great, but it’s got a couple of extra buttons on the outside that seem to be there mostly to confuse the living shit out of me.