Cell phones are wonderful, especially the complicated new ones that do everything short of cooking dinner and baby sitting the children. The future George Gilder predicted thirty years ago in Life After Television is here.
But when it comes to cell phone etiquette we are stuck in the barbarian past. Some people still shout into the little devices as if they couldn't be heard otherwise. That is annoying even out on a busy street. But the worst bores are those who ruthlessly ignore everyone around them in restaurants, theaters and meetings, dulling their (probably well-justified) loneliness by talking loudly on their cell phones to whoever they think might validate their existence and the importance of their every fleeting thought.
A woman at the neighborhood coffee house sat right across from me one recent morning and for twenty minutes blathered on her phone about her job as a university soccer coach. She talked about her pay, the team's schedule, even the supposed derelictions of her fellow coaches.
There was no reading my paper; she had seized me by the eardrums and wouldn't let go. Like many with cellphonitis, she stared straight ahead, resolutely avoiding eye contact. Other patrons squirmed, finished their coffee and left. So did I. Too bad we couldn't have charged her for our time.
I am not going to let this happen again. Lady, you are going to be confronted. If you are happy to broadcast your private business to an uncaring world, fine, but I plan to share my own discomfiture in being forced to share that activity--and I will share it with you. I won't raise my voice, but I will stand in space where you can't avoid me and start discussing the situation reasonably with you until you give up your call and quit bellowing.
Meanwhile, here is a good indication that cell phone providers--like liquor makers who run ads about "responsible drinking"--are alert to the irritation their product can cause.
I don't want another law (please), just enforcement of a custom that civilized people respect in other situations. Keep your conversations to yourself.
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