Cellular Division


Wherein Our Heroine Goes Telephonic.
Among the various things that tick me off (gross grammatical gaffes, un-Snopesed scare-mail, hiding behind "belief" when your argument is factually deficient, and blindingly oblivious people), cell phone misuse doesn't generally make the list. Generally speaking, someone braying their personal life into a handset while walking down the street is not going to send me into a tooth-grinding, smoldering rage. Good thing, too.

Sometimes people's cell phone (mis)use is just funny. I was waiting for a DC to New York flight recently. Inevitably, summer thunderstorms were closing down LaGuardia, and all sorts of lobbyists and business folk were getting their drawers in several types of complicated origami bundles over the situation. I was in the enviable position of being a tourist - I had no meetings I was going to miss, so I was reasonably relaxed and into the people-watching. (Granted, I would have liked to get to New York on schedule, because I did miss out on some quality time with Mom, but as someone who achieved elite flyer status on Delta solely via a metric bazillion DC-NY shuttle flights, I know better than to get tense over this situation, as there is nothing that can be done about it except sprint for Amtrak). Inevitably, as cancellation after cancellation was announced, the cell phones got whipped out, meetings were adjusted and assistants were deployed to get tickets in that aforementioned Amtrak sprint.

One gentleman with a bad connection was apparently getting his assistant to drag his luggage over to Union Station so he could catch the Amtrak (? No, I don't know why he didn't have his bags either). His connection was apparently bad, so the hapless Lisa (we all knew the poor dear's name by the end of his travails) was called approximately seventeen times, and as the connection wavered, our friend sans luggage resorted to a little-known cellular telecommunications bypass technique: the tin-can-and-string method. This method relies on the purely unscientific theory that all telecommunications boil down to the type of technology we all used at age six to talk to a friend a few yards away, and the solution to a poor connection is volume. I am sure that Lisa over on K Street or Georgetown or wherever she was could hear him just fine if she just put the phone down and pointed her ear towards National Airport. At any rate, it made a nice change from my book to watch this pompous gentleman with his undies in a bunch loudly try to direct his assistant to bring him more (and hopefully bunch-less) ones.

Much less funny (aha! you knew there was a rant in here somewhere, didn't you?) was the woman who appeared to be stalking me through Barnes & Noble yesterday. I was on a quest for a particular book when I noticed that this woman was striding about the store and talking quite constantly into her phone. Okay, fine - I don't confuse B&N with a library, though I probably wouldn't choose it as a place to have a long confab. As time went on, though, it got a little disturbing on two levels. First of all, I had to search several sections in order to (not) find the book I was looking for. Every time I moved to a different section, I passed her, and then was treated to her marching up and down past the aisle where I was looking for my book, jabbering all the while. Secondly (and more disturbing) was the content of her conversation - she was some sort of therapist or counselor and she was talking about one of her patients' issues as she marched up and down past the various aisles where I searched in vain for the right book. Whoa, lady - I don't want or need to hear about some kid's ADD issues, but his parents might like to know that you're blabbing them for all the world to hear. While I waited to check out, she stood just outside the roped-off checkout area and complained to her auditor (who didn't appear to say anything during the course of this "conversation" as the cell-phone woman never paused to draw breath) about how she needed to move out of her current living situation and find another job (yes, preferably one where you are not privy to people's personal lives). I paid for the book (not the one I went into the store to buy), scooted out of the store as quickly as my legs could take me, and saw her marching down the street as I pulled out of the parking garage.

She was finally off the phone.
Posted: Thursday - September 16, 2004 at 08:17 AM         | |

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