Grrrrrrrr
It happened again!
Tonight I went to the Reconciliation(otherwise known as Confession) service. There were a bunch of people there, waiting to see the priest, and someone’s pager went off, followed, about 10 minutes later, but a cell phone.
Now…this is the first time I’ve been to Reconciliation in 15 years…and I have to hear pagers and cell phones!!! Bah!
My boss gave me a cell phone.
A couple of weeks later he asked me if it was working.
I said that I did not know, for I had not turned it on.
We had a discussion on the subject of intrusion, and he took back the cell phone.
Then a few weeks later he asked if my home phone was working.
I said that I thought it was, but I kept the ringer turned off, had the phone permanently plugged into the answering machine, and only returned calls from family and close friends.
We had another discussion on intrusion.
Some folks just don’t grok privacy. Others can’t figure out the difference between appropriate and inappropriate times and places. Oh for the return of the likes of Trudeau and his insistance on a clear division between public and private, work and home.
I used to carry a cell phone for support for work, but I don’t need to do that anymore. Now, the only reason I use it is to call my wife to pick me up at the bus stop if it’s really cold or is raining, 'cause the walk home is about a mile otherwise. All the rest of the time, it’s turned off, including during most of the bus trip home.
I’ve ranted before about using the cell phone on the bus, because before the invention of this little torture machine, one used to be able to nap peacefully. Upon occasion, you might even miss your stop and have to call home to get them to pick you up from some weird place.
No chance of that happening anymore.
I haven’t been to church in so long I can’t remember the last time I attended, but the idea that someone would have their cell phone on in that place is just too sacrilegious for words. And if I were a teacher/professor and one went off during class, that student would be expelled. Instantly, no questions asked. UNLESS he/she had explained before class that they absolutely positively needed it because of some emergency situation. The nerve of a student to carry on a conversation in the middle of class! Dear Gawd!
And what kind of sinner would keep it on during confession? Seems to me that would be automatic grounds for being consigned to the lowest and hottest ring of Hell.
I know that if I was ever attacked by 2 giant cell phones I would certainly chase after them. What I don’t get is how they run so fast in those suits:)
o/~ Jesus is tenderly calling you home,
But not on your phone,
Please turn off that phone… o/~
These people are the best. What you do is listen and comment. Then, when they say something, you just say (in a very awed voice), “Oh, I was just letting you know that we all got the point you were trying so hard to make–you must be one really important person to have a cell phone.”
::Adds evilbeth to his list of heroines::
I think what irks me the most is the volume that a lot of people use on a cell phone. For example, say I’m grocery shopping. Lots of people there, lots of conversations going on. Why can I easily pick out the cell phone caller? Because he/she is SHOUTING into the phone! “What? No, WE DON’T NEED MILK. I GOT MILK YESTERDAY. DOES YOUR ASS ITCH? I’LL ASK THE PHARMACIST WHILE I’M HERE. GREEN? ARE YOU SURE?”
On the rare occasion that I use a cell phone, I speak in a normal tone of voice as if the person was next to me. I mean, shit- the whole world doesn’t want to hear your jabbering!
For these reasons (as well as the fact that my husband joined a band), I keep an ample supply of earplugs in my purse. Pop those bad boys in and instantly the library talkers, cell phone yellers, and others melt away…Ahhhhhh… (obviously I don’t mean you should do this in church)
Zette
Muffin, you are my new hero. So many people just don’t understand the concept that a telephone is an interruption device - for the owner as well as for bystanders. I hate answering my own phone, let alone hearing other people answer theirs. I’m busy, I’m doing stuff - I don’t want to be interrupted by the phone (mine or yours).
Zette you have to see “Trigger Happy TV”. You’d love it…or hate it so much that you’ll have to destroy your TV;)
Ok, you’re in class, in church, in the movies, and your cell phone rings. Clearly, you neglected to turn off the ringer, perhaps an honest mistake. BUT YOU CHOOSE TO ANSWER THE CALL??? Couldn’t you just turn off the ringer now and not answer? It’s bad enough in the movie theater to have a phone ring ten times before someone figures out it’s theirs, but then to listen to “Hello? HELLO?” and then the explanation to your friends that there was no one there, blah, blah, blah…
I work in customer service. Most of the clerks are great, and really try hard to do a good job. There’s a few that are just a wee bit clueless, though. Here’s the story of one:
A couple of weeks ago, one of our clerks (henceforth referred to as Nimrod) was in the middle of waiting on a customer when her (the clerk, not the customer) cell phone started ringing. Nimrod answered it.
Think that’s stupid? It gets worse. She then excused herself from the customer, and asked one of our SENIOR clerks to finish waiting on the customer.
When I heard about that (from the above mentioned senior clerk), I thought I’d faint. I don’t CARE how much you dislike waiting on the public–it is your job at the moment, and you do NOT interrupt it to take a call on a fucking cell phone. And unless the call you’ve received (either on your cell phone or one of the multitude of office phones we’ve got) is an absolute emergency, there is no way in HELL you should ask your SENIOR to finish YOUR job while you take the call!
Cell phones can be useful, and for some people, they are necessary. In our office, though, they are not necessary, at all. While not everyone in the office has a phone of their own, there is NO shortage of them. If you get a call, emergency or not, you can be reached within seconds, minutes at most if you happen to be away from your desk. And everyone, I mean everyone, is willing to either a) take a message if it’s not an emergency, or b) get up and LOOK FOR YOU if they are told that it IS an emergency. They WILL. They’ve been known to holler in to the rest room to try and find a clerk with an emergency call.
So just put your hands in the air and back away from the cell phone, okay? You don’t need it here.
Thanks. I’ll e-mail you for assistance when my boss and I have a shoot out on main street.
You see, he put my home phone number in the yellow pages. Now I’ve got every Saturday night drunk tank guest calling me up in the wee hours.
Which of course led to yet another discussion on intrusion.
Last week I called him at his girlfriend’s place (he is married) very late at night, just to try to get the point across. However, he utterly defeated me by being happy to receive such a call. He just does not get the point.
Today I went for a job interview. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Hey Muffin
Maybe you should call your boss ** at home **really late at night, when he is at his girlfriends. Just in case his wife needs to know.
What really pisses me off, is people who talk on the phone in a language other than English. This deprives me of being able to comment on their conversation and let them know what I think they should do for the evening, which movie, what to do about bill’s brother, etc…
bastards!
Way to go, Muffin.
Management loves the idea of pagers and cell phones, keeping the employees on a 24/7 leash. Why hire a second person for support when you can just make the first one work harder? (makes obscene gesture in general direction of plant)
I’ve been waiting for this to be proposed to me at work. It’s going to get turned down no ifs, ands or buts if when it comes up. I’ve probably got enough power to get away with it. I feel for the ones who don’t.
I carried a pager for 3 years, on a 24 hour 30 minute response basis. The intrusion into your personal life is incredibly annoying. Damn, maybe the Luddites had it right after all.
[rant]
Hear about all of those studies claiming that cell phones cause brain damage? Damn right they do. You see an example of it every time a ziphead blows past on the highway doing 85 with his/her phone glued to his/her ear. I see this all the time. In the rain, in the snow, weaving back and forth between lanes to try to get somewhere 30 seconds faster than everyone else.
[end rant]