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It's not a phone booth; it's a restroom
By GERIANNE WRIGHT
Staff Writer
I’m behind the times, I’m not “with” it. I don’t own an iPod, a Blackberry, a Wii, Me or You. I barely own a cell phone. I pay as I go, contributing to Richard Branson’s Virgin empire.
But I doubt there’s anyone who could come up with a legitimate answer when I ask what could possibly be so important that you’d have to bring your cell phone into the bathroom stall with you?
II walked into the women’s room in Hawkins Hall at Plattsburgh State the other day, and there in a stall sat a student, pants around her ankles, yammering on her cell phone. People were coming and going, using the bathroom for its intended purpose, toilets were flushing all around her. Yet there she sat, talking as though she were anywhere else in the world.
“Um, Sally, where are you, Niagara Falls?”
“Oh, no, I’m sitting on a toilet in a public restroom. Just a minute, I have to put the phone down while I pull up my pants.”
Aside from the fact that it’s unsanitary – I doubt the perpetrators use hand sanitizer on their cells afterward – it’s just plain rude. Not to those around them. It gives fellow patrons something to focus on other than the job at hand, although I have to say, I keep thinking these Chatty Cathies are talking to me when they first break the solemnity of solitude that some of us crave in a restroom.
“Hey, hi, it’s me!”
“Oh, hi. … Excuse me for not getting up.”
“I’m not talking to you…I don’t even know you.”
Good thing. I’d rather not be acquainted with people who think so little of my sense of propriety.
Or at least who give no thought to the person on the other end. Put yourself in their shoes, which, hopefully, aren’t sitting in front of a toilet bowl somewhere else on the planet. How would you like to know that the person you’re talking to is carrying on a conversation after dropping trou? Now there’s an image you’ll have a hard time erasing the next time you see them in public. And how’d you like to be the next one to use that phone should you need to borrow it to make a quick call. Let’s just hope she washed her hands.
I know it’s hard to find a minute to yourself to make a phone call. Oh, wait, no it’s not. You can’t go anywhere anymore without seeing everyone around you carrying on conversations with a cell phone or one of those goofy-looking ear pieces stuck to the side of their heads. You’ve got to wonder who the hell they’re talking to and who were we not talking to before everyone had cell phones? But even all the people you see walking along with cell phones as appendages aren’t nearly as disturbing as the bathroom-stall-as-phone-booth scenario.
What’s next? Bringing your laptop in to write a blog?
Comments
Right on! The cellphone, while a valuable tool, has seemingly permeated every activity and not in good ways. Cellphone etiquette is certainly something of mixed understanding here in the North Country.
I don't think it can be pinned on just one cause either and I'm not saying that there are not extenuating circumstances. What if, while on the Think Tank, an important phone call comes in - say, I don't know, an emergency of sorts.
But, for most people that want a private conversation I think not of someone absconding to the porcelain room. I suppose it comes back to the question...what does one do while there? Hence all the "bathroom-books."
But, what you say takes it one step further. Cell-phone etiquette. In the workplace, in the ordering line, on the road, in restaurants, in the theatres, at funerals, or other places of public importance.
Equally as confusing to me are people with the Bluetooth earpieces that walk about town talking, seemingly, to themselves. One doesn't know to either slip them a reference for a good psychiatrist - at least they're paid to listen to you talk about personal matters - or answer the random questions that are shot in your general direction.
I'd say the social device of a cell-phone seems to be part of a lack of communication altogether. What about the term meeting a man on the street? Not anymore. You're talking to grandma as you window shop. What about that great service you received? Service, hm? Sorry, you were lost in conversation with Jane Doe about what she said to John Doe yesterday.
And to be the one offended by a cellphone user's constant usage seems equal to insulting their paternal relations. It's unfortunate that when being rude on a cellphone, too many turn that around as if you - the innocent bystander that is unhappily aware of a personal matter - is the culprit.
It'll only lead to more and more unusual places to speak on the phone, I suspect.
Posted by: Lucas | April 24, 2008 5:08 PM