November 2, 2003
Cell-phone calls have destroyed a thing called good etiquette
Yet another article on bad cell manners by an irrate journalist, this time in The Chicago Tribune's Sunday edition.
Steve Chapman gives some pretty awful examples of people phoning in inappropiate places - such as overhearing someone chatting inside a toilet stall at an airport restroom (by the way a recent survey by LetsTalk reported only last week, that Americans frown on cell phones in movie theaters and cars, but tolerate calls taken in the restroom), or having to put up with cab drivers carrying on conversations in strange tongues while they drive passengers around. All of this in addition to "talking while driving, walking down the sidewalk, riding the bus, standing in line at the grocery, getting dressed in the locker room, sitting at a ball game or sharing a meal in a restaurant"...
Chapman wonders whatever happened to idle time, which gave people the opportunity to think or daydream. "Introspection and even boredom can be useful. Who knows what we're losing by depriving ourselves of occasional silence and solitude?" Shakespeare may have only composed nothing more than clever voice-mail messages. Isaac Newton may have never wondered why apples fall downward.
Chapman even goes as far as imagining that he could be at a funeral and "see the pallbearers whip out cell phones as they lug the deceased to his final resting place". "Or hear chirping from inside the casket".
Not so farfetched, in some countries this is actually common.
Dead people in Slovakia are buried with their mobile phones and it is not unusual, that while a priest performs the funeral rites, ring tones will echo around the church from within a casket. Slovakians have been buried with an object of value for generations. (cf article in Ananova dated October 31st, 2001).
For more on cell phone etiquette, check out this category in Textually.org. For more on camera phone etiquette, check out this category in Picturephoning.com.
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