This is actually a problem that crops up every now and then in the Usenet group rec.arts.theatre.musicals, or RATM, with us ratmites from three continents vying for the coveted title of “The audiences in (London/New York/Amsterdam/Tel Aviv/Hong Kong, etc.) are the rudest in the world.” It is possible in most theatres to do what people did before there WERE cell phones–if you’re a doctor or whatever, tell the front-of-house staff where you’re sitting and they’ll take your pager and fetch you if it goes off.
As if the chatter-infested Amtrak ride the day before wasn’t bad enough (I now actually avoid sitting next to somebody I see digging a cell phone out of their bags, to avoid 200 miles of “HI! I’M ON THE TRAIN!”) last Friday I was at this:
Namely a Frank Loesser (GUYS AND DOLLS, etc.) concert at Lincoln Center, and just when the cabaret legend Margaret Whiting was starting the poignant “The Lady’s in Love With You”, a phone went off. Loudly. And somebody had it buried deep in their bag, so it went on for about 30 seconds as they frantically dug it out. And it was playing–I kid you not–“Take Me Out to the Ballgame”.
Appropriate since we were in NYC the day before the Series, but sheesh. Kinda ruined the moment.
I work in the critical care units at my hospital, and yes, people do sneak cell phones in. One gentleman who’s lucky he’s still alive had one of those earpieces to conceal the phone. I and one of the nurses asked him to please not use the phone, and offered one of ours for his use. He was polite in that passive-agressive “fuck you” kind of way. :rolleyes: I guess when a patient’s monitor goes nutso, people will learn.
However :eek: I’m one of the privileged pagered. The two pagers I’ve got on my waist are so I can give clerical support if needed. (One is so people can call me, the other one is the code pager… if that one goes off, I go running.) I don’t LIKE these pagers. I consider them a nuisance. However, if the hospital is to function effectively, these pagers have to exist.
Japanese law keeps up with technology about as well as Pauly Shore keeps up with elementary particle physics. They’ve only just recently gotten around to acknowledging the existence of these electric typwriter/TV thingies. Most rules regarding mobile phones are little more than requests for common courtesy.
That said, I don’t know of any businesses that are built to block phone signals. So many people use mobile phones here that the building’s employees would probably be more inconvenienced by blocking than by inappropriate ringing.
Of course, there are some places I wish were blocked. I’ve been ignoring them up until now, but I swear the next time I hear a phone ring while I’m performing a wedding ceremony, I’m going to hold everything until the noise stops. Now I just have to learn the Japanese for “aren’t you going to answer it? It could be an emergency call from RosieWolf.”
There is a girl in my math class who gets a call every class. (we meet once a week). she haas been told, several times, to turn the phone off before she comes. In one ear and out the other. The phone goes off. She pulls it out and answers it. Then she gets up to leave, as if to say "It’s private and I don’t want you listening in"
Just 2 days after posting this, I experienced the musical cell phone first hand. My husband and I were out having brunch on Sunday morning, when this horrible MIDI music started playing. After fruitlessly trying to figure out where it was coming from, I realized the man sitting directly behind me was talking on his cell phone. Ahh.
Fortunately, even though we were very close together (if I leaned back slightly I could have touched him) he was polite and quiet on the phone.
Red Dwarf ringer? I guess that would be better than “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
Just 2 days after posting this, I experienced the musical cell phone first hand. My husband and I were out having brunch on Sunday morning, when this horrible MIDI music started playing. After fruitlessly trying to figure out where it was coming from, I realized the man sitting directly behind me was talking on his cell phone. Ahh.
Fortunately, even though we were very close together (if I leaned back slightly I could have touched him) he was polite and quiet on the phone.
Red Dwarf ringer? I guess that would be better than “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
We have a problem with cell phones going off in our church for quite some time. Before the service we have opening slides that have general info about current events, child care, hearing impared provisions, etc… and one of them is even about cell phones and pagers and asks you to please turn them off or to ‘vibrate’. This visual reminder helped some but they would still go off every now and then. One went off during the scripture and nothing was said - about 30 minutes later during the sermon the same phone went off and the minister stopped, looked straight at the person and said “Its OK, we can wait, go ahead and finish your call” and just stood there staring at the floor for about two minutes.
Well, I won’t mention the W-word, but–yeah–it was pretty apparent that he was being facetious.
I’m going to stick to my guns and say that if you can’t attend a performance where there’s a decent possiblity of you breaking the rules of etiquette (i.e. no beeps/rings/etc. during the performance, no talking, no getting up and walking around, etc.) then either make arrangements like those suggested by McKenna, or don’t go. People pay good money for tickets expecting that they won’t be disturbed by that sort of thing. Of course, if your phone vibrates and you have to get up and leave because of a screen message about a life-or-death emergency at home, then that’s a different matter. There are plenty of activities you can do besides a symphony concert, opera, or play where talking out loud, getting up and walking around, etc. are much more tolerable.
Is anyone else having a really tough time imagining RosieWolf at an orchestral performance, or is it just me?
As a member of the profession that pretty much invented the idea of “being on call”, I don’t think that anyone should be “on call” all the time. Doctors tend to make it very clear when they are on call and when they aren’t. I realize that some jobs require employees to be on call 24/7, but, well, they shouldn’t.
For those who do go out while on call, the best thing you can do is put the pager or phone on vibrate and sit on the aisle. If you’re at a ticketed event, you can usually trade seats with someone if you explain the situation. Yes, it is sometimes rude to get up and leave, but IMO it is far ruder to sit there yammering on your cell phone.
As for parents going out without the kids, I really don’t think this requires a cell phone. Just tell the sitter, “We’re going to see ‘Charlie’s Angels’ at the Regal 16 and then eat at the Red Lobster on Nicholasville Road. Here are the phone numbers. Call us if it’s an emergency.” That way, if little Billy is on his way to the hospital with appendicitis*, the sitter can call you, but you’re not likely to be called because Timmy isn’t playing fair or because they can’t find the mustard.
Those parents who must, for whatever reason, be in constant contact via cell phone or pager can follow the advice above.
Dr. J
Someone was concerned about Billy’s appendix rupturing because his parents weren’t there to consent. This would not happen. In an emergent situation such as that, the doctor can operate without consent.
I was at a conference where Robert Novak was speaking. He was in the middle of his speech and his cell phone rang. Without missing a beat, he picked it up and turned it off without even looking to see who was calling.
This is the kind of thing that makes me mad. There is no excuse for that kind of mismanagement. You cannot expect anyone to be available 24/7. No one. Not even doctors. What would have happened if you had been unavailable when a call came in? What if you had just been in an accident? What if your car had broken down and you were in the middle of nowhere? What if the duty phone had quit working? What if you were stuck in a traffic jam and there was nothing to do but wait it out? In a situation like yours it was absolutely criminal for your employers to set themselves up to be that dependant on one person.
I’ll second what Strainger said about concerts–anyone who can’t be incommunicado for an evening should not be at a concert or show. There are plenty of other things to do where being called would not cause problems. And again, if a person can never make arrangements to be totally unavailable for a few hours there is something horribly wrong with the organization he works for.
MOVIE SPOILER AHEAD FOR THOSE THAT HAVEN’T SEEN THE EXORCIST
This happened to me just the other night, while seeing The Exorcist… End of the movie, Karass is dying at the bottom of the stairs, Dyer asks him to confess his sins… and the woman sitting in our row a few seats over, her cell phone goes off with some musical ditty. “Do you want to confess anything?” “Beep beep boopy beepity beep beep beep.” Did Karass say something profound or revealing or even corny? I’ll never know.
Of course, you don’t need a cell phone to be an asshole, or an idiot. There was the guy (same row, appearently the woman above’s boyfriend) who, as Karass found the elderly priest (I’m horrible with names) dead, said out loud and appearently to me “Ha, she killed him! Ha!” Thanks. :rolleyes:
There is absolutely no way in which I disagree with you. it was a completely FUBARed situation, which is why I left. The duty phone was backed up by a duty pager, which I never metioned, but I also had to have on me at all times.(I’m sure I looked like a complete jackass with my personal cell phone, duty phone, duty pager, company supplied ‘personal pager’ and company supplied ‘time manager’(palm pilot) all strapped to my belt at all times). However nothing about it was illegal, it was all carefully scripted within FCC quidelines. If the duty phone and pager both were un available at the same time, then it was my fault. If I was to take a vaction in some other country(which I never did) I was supposed to report it at least 6 weeks ahead of time so they could get a phone and a pager that worked whereever I was going to be.
As a parent, I can say that the paranoid woman I married would never leave the house for a whole evening if the cell phone didn’t come along for the ride.
Go out and do what we did before cell phones? We didn’t go out. The missus wouldn’t think of it. The kid went or we didn’t.
BTW - I set mine for “Stun” and if it isn’t the sitter (God bless caller ID) I ignore it.
Am I an ignorant fuck for feeling that my need to know is more important than your quiet evening out? I don’t care! I have been alerted to my mother-in-law’s hospitalization in time for my wife to see her alive one last time, my son’s dog bite to the face in time to authorize stitches early enough to prevent scarring, and a number of other things you could care less about. Important to me, doesn’t mean dick to you. That’s human nature.
Think about it this way. If you have to sit in traffic for an hour because someone was killed in a car crash, do you feel sorry for the family of the dead or do you get frustrated for yourself? What’s important to you doesn’t mean shit to everyone else. I don’t remember who said it but it applies here: [/paraphrase:on]All of the starving children in Ethiopia don’t matter on bit to someone with something stuck in their teeth[/paraphrase:off]
So get over it. No one got hurt. If such a small thing has so much power over you, what does that say about your miserable, pathetic, so-called life?
As a parent, I can say that the paranoid woman I married would never leave the house for a whole evening if the cell phone didn’t come along for the ride.
Go out and do what we did before cell phones? We didn’t go out. The missus wouldn’t think of it. The kid went or we didn’t.
BTW - I set mine for “Stun” and if it isn’t the sitter (God bless caller ID) I ignore it.
Am I an ignorant fuck for feeling that my need to know is more important than your quiet evening out? I don’t care! I have been alerted to my mother-in-law’s hospitalization in time for my wife to see her alive one last time, my son’s dog bite to the face in time to authorize stitches early enough to prevent scarring, and a number of other things you couldn’t care less about. Important to me, doesn’t mean dick to you. That’s human nature.
Think about it this way. If you have to sit in traffic for an hour because someone was killed in a car crash, do you feel sorry for the family of the dead or do you get frustrated for yourself? What’s important to you doesn’t mean shit to everyone else. I don’t remember who said it but it applies here: [/paraphrase:on]All of the starving children in Ethiopia don’t matter on bit to someone with something stuck in their teeth[/paraphrase:off]
So get over it. No one got hurt. If such a small thing has so much power over you, what does that say about your miserable, pathetic, so-called life?
As a parent, I can say that the paranoid woman I married would never leave the house for a whole evening if the cell phone didn’t come along for the ride.
Go out and do what we did before cell phones? We didn’t go out. The missus wouldn’t think of it. The kid went or we didn’t.
BTW - I set mine for “Stun” and if it isn’t the sitter (God bless caller ID) I ignore it.
Am I an ignorant fuck for feeling that my need to know is more important than your quiet evening out? I don’t care! I have been alerted to my mother-in-law’s hospitalization in time for my wife to see her alive one last time, my son’s dog bite to the face in time to authorize stitches early enough to prevent scarring, and a number of other things you couldn’t care less about. Important to me, doesn’t mean dick to you. That’s human nature.
Think about it this way. If you have to sit in traffic for an hour because someone was killed in a car crash, do you feel sorry for the family of the dead or do you get frustrated for yourself? What’s important to you doesn’t mean shit to everyone else. I don’t remember who said it but it applies here: [/paraphrase:on]All of the starving children in Ethiopia don’t matter on bit to someone with something stuck in their teeth[/paraphrase:off]
So get over it. No one got hurt. If such a small thing has so much power over you, what does that say about your miserable, pathetic, so-called life?
As a parent, I can say that the paranoid woman I married would never leave the house for a whole evening if the cell phone didn’t come along for the ride.
Go out and do what we did before cell phones? We didn’t go out. The missus wouldn’t think of it. The kid went or we didn’t.
BTW - I set mine for “Stun” and if it isn’t the sitter (God bless caller ID) I ignore it.
Am I an ignorant fuck for feeling that my need to know is more important than your quiet evening out? I don’t care! I have been alerted to my mother-in-law’s hospitalization in time for my wife to see her alive one last time, my son’s dog bite to the face in time to authorize stitches early enough to prevent scarring, and a number of other things you couldn’t care less about. Important to me, doesn’t mean dick to you. That’s human nature.
Think about it this way. If you have to sit in traffic for an hour because someone was killed in a car crash, do you feel sorry for the family of the dead or do you get frustrated for yourself? What’s important to you doesn’t mean shit to everyone else. I don’t remember who said it but it applies here: [/paraphrase:on]All of the starving children in Ethiopia don’t matter on bit to someone with something stuck in their teeth[/paraphrase:off]
So get over it. No one got hurt. If such a small thing has so much power over you, what does that say about your miserable, pathetic, so-called life?
