Phil Elmore
Master of Arts
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2002
- Messages
- 1,514
- Reaction score
- 54
I was in the bank when a woman's purse started beeping out the notes of Play That Funky Music, White Boy.
Now, I'm a tolerant guy, really. I understand that people are busy and they have lots to do in our modern times. I understand that some calls are important. I understand that sometimes you have to share the details of your life with people around you who couldn't care less if -- and perhaps actively hope that -- you burst into flames while breaking up with your long-distance girlfriend in the middle of the Food Court. What boggles my mind, though, is that people who are obnoxious enough to take phone calls in banks, in restaurants, and walking down the Midway at the State Fair, don't realize that they could at least mitigate the degree to which they bother the people around them.
"I'm on the Midway. I SAID, I'M ON THE MIDWAY," the woman shouted as she passed my wife and I at the Fair. Just before that, her phone belted out an impressive electronic rendition of the Ave Maria.
Just where does it stop?
It's bad enough to be having dinner when you hear the idiot seated next to you take the insistent ring or pulsing table-rattling vibration of an incoming call. It's bad enough to sit there pawing through your fried shrimp while that dolt goes on to shout, too loudly over the bad connection giving him a brain tumor far too slowly, "The doctor says the rash will go away in a few days. I SAID, THE RASH WILL GO AWAY IN A FEW DAYS! NO, I JUST NEED YOUR HELP APPLYING THE OINTMENT!"
No, no, that's more than bad enough. But must our phones also engage in complex pieces of classical music while trying to get our attention?
I watched a man whose phone was doing its feeble best to imitate A Night on Bald Mountain dueling it out passively with a coworker whose phone was in the midst of The Blue Danube, both of them walking too slowly down the main corridor of my office building. I wanted to grab my Stanley Bostitch and chase them, beating them both into submission while delivering an horrific Near Death by Standard Stapler, shouting all the while, "YOUR PHONE IS NOT A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT AND I DON'T NEED TO HEAR IT PLAYING WALTZES WHEN I'M WALKING THROUGH CROWDS AT THE MALL!"
Turn your phone to standard ring and set it to "soft."
I and my stapler will be listening closely.
Now, I'm a tolerant guy, really. I understand that people are busy and they have lots to do in our modern times. I understand that some calls are important. I understand that sometimes you have to share the details of your life with people around you who couldn't care less if -- and perhaps actively hope that -- you burst into flames while breaking up with your long-distance girlfriend in the middle of the Food Court. What boggles my mind, though, is that people who are obnoxious enough to take phone calls in banks, in restaurants, and walking down the Midway at the State Fair, don't realize that they could at least mitigate the degree to which they bother the people around them.
"I'm on the Midway. I SAID, I'M ON THE MIDWAY," the woman shouted as she passed my wife and I at the Fair. Just before that, her phone belted out an impressive electronic rendition of the Ave Maria.
Just where does it stop?
It's bad enough to be having dinner when you hear the idiot seated next to you take the insistent ring or pulsing table-rattling vibration of an incoming call. It's bad enough to sit there pawing through your fried shrimp while that dolt goes on to shout, too loudly over the bad connection giving him a brain tumor far too slowly, "The doctor says the rash will go away in a few days. I SAID, THE RASH WILL GO AWAY IN A FEW DAYS! NO, I JUST NEED YOUR HELP APPLYING THE OINTMENT!"
No, no, that's more than bad enough. But must our phones also engage in complex pieces of classical music while trying to get our attention?
I watched a man whose phone was doing its feeble best to imitate A Night on Bald Mountain dueling it out passively with a coworker whose phone was in the midst of The Blue Danube, both of them walking too slowly down the main corridor of my office building. I wanted to grab my Stanley Bostitch and chase them, beating them both into submission while delivering an horrific Near Death by Standard Stapler, shouting all the while, "YOUR PHONE IS NOT A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT AND I DON'T NEED TO HEAR IT PLAYING WALTZES WHEN I'M WALKING THROUGH CROWDS AT THE MALL!"
Turn your phone to standard ring and set it to "soft."
I and my stapler will be listening closely.
