But why look at it at all unless you have some sort of emergency going on? Why not turn it off?
I actually had a friend who thought it was OK to leave her phone on during a job interview because it just gives a quick beep when she has a call, and they should understand that she’s looking for a job and may hear from people. OMG–have the respect to turn off your phone in a job interview–talk about a situation where you want them to think there is nothing more important than them!
In all fairness, sometimes you need the phone on to make the decision about whether it’s “urgent” or not. For example, if I had kids and we were out, and I the number I saw on the screen was our home number - so, the babysitter calling - I would expect that to be an “unforeseen event” that required my immediate attention, like a kid falling down the stairs or the toddler swallowing my iPod.
I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who asked to be excused and took a call because “the babysitter is calling” or “nursing home is calling”. I dated a girl who was the primary caregiver to her sick mom. There was an emergency button her mom could use to get help, similar to the service in the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” commercial. This allowed my then-girlfriend to still have a life. Even then, it was always set to vibrate, and she didn’t answer unless it was the emergency service.
For the times when you don’t have to be there 24-7, but you still do have serious responsibilities, a phone can be a lifeline.
But picking up the phone because your buddy is calling (probably not an emergency) and the proceeding to chat socially while you’re otherwise already socially engaged, is dickish.
It depends largely on your situation. I always leave mine on in case daycare calls to tell me something is wrong, like my son is sick and I need to pick him up. Or, if my husband can’t make it in time to pick my son up, it allows him to let me know. Daycare charges something like $10 a minute for every minute you’re late, so it’s definitely worth it to know if something will prevent either of us from getting to our son on time.
My problem with cell phone usage is that it often demonstrates a remarkable lack of manners and judgment. Generally, if I’m talking to someone, I’m not going to answer my cell phone. If I see it’s daycare, I’ll make an exception - daycare only calls me for two reasons: my son is sick or they need to close the building. Either situation requires me or my husband to get there as quickly as possible and get our son. If the person calling is a friend or family member who regularly calls just to say hi or really anyone else but my husband who usually doesn’t call unless something has happened, I’m not going to answer or listen to the voicemail until I’m done with my conversation/lunch/meeting/whatever.
Most of the time, cellphone use in public doesn’t bother me at all. But I can see why various businesses would have signs exhorting their clientele to Hang The Fuck Up, There Are People In Line Behind You While Every Miniscule Thought In Your Brain Falls Out Of Your Mouth.
If you’re just sitting by yourself in a waiting room, I don’t see the problem, as long as you can control the volume of your voice. What if you started talking to a person that was sitting next to you in the waiting room? Is that frowned upon, too?
I lived in the NYC metroplex until recently, and I noticed a LOT of phone yelling, phone TMI’ing, and generally behaving as if telephones sanctioned the public spreading of all kinds of bad karma. The kind of people who used to litter or blow smoke everywhere now do their thing by bitching, venting, or blurting monotone business clichés five feet away from you at Starbucks.
But New Yorkers are a vibrant and authentic lot, and we mustn’t speak ill of them. At least not more than one at a time KEEP IT THE FUCK DOWN BITCHASS MUHFUCKA.
The problem is that waiting rooms and stuff are usually respectfully quiet. Like in churches or funeral homes. When you’re talking with someone sitting next to you in a waiting room, they are usually quiet too, so you basically murmur back and forth. A lot of folks on cellphones (not all but probably a vast majority) completely forget they’re not at home when they talk on the phone, tune out everyone else, and forget all basic social graces.
For one, murmuring into a phone generally doesn’t work well, so they have to pipe up. If they get bad reception, they tend to think the person they’re talking to also can’t hear them, and they get louder.
Also, if you get too loud or too TMI with someone in the room who can also see everyone else frowning at the pair of you, they’ll likely try to steer you toward a different subject or to quiet down. Over the phone, the other person has no idea that you’re talking about his bloody urine in front of an audience at the dentist’s office.
I think the ban in waiting rooms though has more to do with what would otherwise be an incessant cacophony of ringtones and buzzing sounds annoying the shit out of the staff. If everyone brought beeping computer games they’d probably ban those too.
This has become a deal breaker for me on a date. If I am so unimportant that you feel the need to answer your phone during dinner, what would happen if we actually got into a relationship?
I recently moved to the east coast and work in New York, and yes, public cell phone use seems way more socially acceptable here, subject matter be damned. I am personally very conservative about making and receiving calls in public. I always have my phone on vibrate, leave it in the car for movies and grocery shopping, and limit my conversations to brief, pointed exchanges. I make the longer calls at home. Sometimes I slip up, but I try to stay conscious of everyone around me. I prioritize what’s in front of me. I will remove the phone from my ear to cross the street, for example, or if someone unexpectedly asks me a question.
My grandmother and my MIL are humiliating in public with cell phones. My MIL is a therapist who will actually answer her phone during sessions with clients. After asking what’s up or making pleasantries, she will then say, as if I am the innapropriate one, “I have a client right now.” Then don’t answer your phone you daft loon! I don’t call her during the day anymore. (Also note, almost every person I personally know who is guilty of obnoxious cell phone behavior has serious relationship and personal boundary issues in general. Anyone else notice this?)
You too?
Agreed. I have thought about this, trying to figure out why the cellphone conversations are so much more annoying than two people having a conversation around me, and I haven’t really come to a good answer, but I do know that they are. A couple walking around in Safeway, talking and shopping, doesn’t bother me in the slightest. A woman walking around in Safeway blabbing away non-stop on her cellphone does.
When I take calls in public (which is not very often at all), I feel quite self-conscious about blabbing away in front of strangers. I’ll try to take myself to a quiet corner or just get away from most people to have the (brief) conversation.
IMO most of these things are just part of being a jerk generally. The sort of person who does hold up a cashier’s line with a cell phone, or discusses TMI issues on it loudly, is probably obnoxious to some degree anyway, and would probably find some other way to be obnoxious if they didn’t have a cell phone. In the old days, they might well have chosen a random stranger in the waiting room, or on the train, or wherever, to bore about the minutiae of their life.
But having said that, I have no objection at all to someone discreetly using a cell phone in public.
When I was growing up, I was taught that phone calls were conducted in private, and the conversation was between just the two people on the line. That concept has gone the way of the dinosaurs, I’m afraid.
And which of those were you doing when you earned your nickname? 
How do you schedule your emergencies?
It’s probably easy for me to be flippant since I average less than one incoming call a day, and that’s usually my wife calling in the evening to find out when I’ll be home. So when a call does come during the daytime, it’s automatically something out of the ordinary.
What amazes me, though, is how so many of the people I’m with look shocked when I take out my phone when a call comes, check the name on the screen, and then put the phone back in my pocket. They can’t imagine why I’m not dropping everything to talk to someone else, because that’s exactly what they all do.
I’m normally a very- almost pathologically- tolerant person. It takes a lot to piss me off.
I hate cell phones.
I live in a country where people are glued to their cell phones. And you know what? If cell phones really do end up causing brain cancer, I’ll be freaking glad. I don’t know why some people have such a manic need to be in constant contact with several people at a time. It’s obsessive and maddening.
First off is volume. Especially on things like buses. Especially buses that are full in the way that only buses in countries with a billion people get full. It’s bodies upon bodies. The last thing I need is some fat fuck screaming whatever into his cell phone right next to my ear. Can’t it wait like ten minutes when you aren’t crowded in a miserable bus with a hundred of your closest friends?
Second off is the spaceyness. You can have one of two kinds of countries. One is a fast paced crowded society where everyone is one the go. The other is a quiet, slow moving society where people mosey on down. But you can’t have both, and this place is trying to have both . So there will be masses of hundreds of people bursting the seems of our narrow sidewalks, held up by one dazed person blabbering on about nothing on her cell phone. I can’t count how many times I’ve almost been hit when the person in front of me in the “mob of people trying to cross the street” has stopped in the middle of the street to start texting someone. I live in a city of a million people crammed into a place that a few decades ago had maybe 50k people. You need to BE there mentally just to navigate the sidewalks. You can’t be lost in your spacey little magic phone world when there are thousands of people who need the space you are taking up.
Finally, the anti-socialness of it all. Almost every time I out with someone they end up making or receiving several phone calls. It’s never " Excuse for a moment, I have to take this call, my mom is on fire." It’s just like one minute I’m talking to my friend and the next I realize my friend is talking to someone else. There are some people I won’t even hang around because they spend half the time on their phone. Whats the point? I might as well be alone. If you are out with someone, they deserve your attention. If your buddy calls, you really don’t have to answer. Or you can say “hey, I can’t talk right now.”
A good illustration of an asshole with a cell phone:
The Bus Uncle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsYRQkmVifg
It’s attention whoring and it annoys everyone around you.
You’re not that important, conduct your personal affairs in private.
Using your cell phone in public implies you think you are that important.
Also, get over yourself and stop acting like a teenager already.
Because people will not stop using them. When I’m talking to a person and they feel they have to answer their cell phone and have a twenty minute conversation about something that doesn’t involve fire or blood, I walk away.
I was once in the 15 items or less line behind a 22 item person. When the cashier had finished ringing up her items and was waiting for payment, she wao too busy talking and texting to notice. I fnally said “We know you can talk and text and you can’t read or count. Do you know how to pay?” The woman said into the phone “Hold a minute. Some white bitch just told me I gotta get off the phone.”
The real reason your doctor and your vet want you to turn off your cellphone is so that you’re not yapping at someone else while we’re trying to talk to you. In a medical office, time is our most valuable resource, and we really can’t afford to waste it waiting for you to hang the fuck up before gathering your things and being brought back to a room, or for you to tell your buddy all about how things are going in the middle of your history or exam or discharge instructions.
I’ve gotten to the point where if someone answers their phone twice while I’m trying to talk to them or show them how to do a treatment on their pet (we’re talking about 10 minutes of actual talk time from me, absolute maximum), I leave the room and go deal with someone else. I’ll get back to Phoney McPhonerson when and only when I’ve finished with that other patient. If they get pissy about having to wait, fuck 'em. Hell, DoctorJ has left an exam room without even seeing or speaking to a patient because they wouldn’t get off the damn phone.
I do have a soft spot in my heart for one type of phone user we get in the clinic sometimes. The kind whose phone rings, and they send it to voicemail. Thirty seconds later, it happens again. We go through this cycle 10 times or so, and as I’m leaving the room, they answer the phone with “I told you I was going to the vet to get Fluffy after her surgery, and I couldn’t hardly hear them over you calling and calling and calling. What the hell do you want, anyhow?”
These people are sadly rare, but I do love them.