What's the deal with cell phones?

People are people and there are bound to be some annoying ones. The fact that they’re talking loudly just draws attention to them. If you’re on a packed bus of people, there’s usually one guy loud on his phone, but that’s a pretty small ratio.

You can ask them to be quiet, put up with it, or move. Sadly, I think there’s not much else you can do.

The sound problem is intrinsic to the cell phones themselves. Landline phones have a feedback channel that allows the speaker to hear themselves. Cell phones do not. Thus, people talk louder.

As to why people behave boorishly with cell phone use, it is because they can. I say something when trapped in a situation with a cell phone user.

My take is that cellphones are like vast sums of money; they allow you to be the asshole you were always meant to be but would never have become without them.

There are many cellphone owners that act courteously and responsibly; they focus on driving, use hands-free so they can keep both hands on the wheel, excuse themselves when tehy take a call so that their conversation doesn’t disturb others, etcetera. But then you have the type of people you notice; the assholes you are referring to.

@marinelife I use the same tone/volume of voice I would if the person were right in front of me. Than may be loud if I am somewhere with a lot of ambient noise, but I shout at the guy next to me when forklifts or 18-wheelers are rolling by or when I am at work in a machine shop. You might be right about other people though.

@jerv I am not sure that you could know that without an audio meter. It would be a good test.

“Cellphone talkers’ louder-than-usual voices may also divert others’ attention, suggests psychologist David Strayer of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. People speaking in person give each other nonverbal cues that modulate voice volume, but that’s missing in cellphone conversations, he says.” Wired Science

“Until cellphone manufacturers finally get it together and force the volume of the ear buds and ear pieces of cellphones to be disproportionately louder than the volume of the person speaking in to the cellphone, then the world will have to resort to a guerilla campaign to quiet down the noisy talkers.” Customer Evangelists

@Austinlad Until it is fixed, here is something you can order and hand out.

@marinelife These are even better…

Well, it just takes time for the social protocol surrounding a new thing to be developed. It’s being developed as we speak by questions like this. People are starting to stand up and say, “That’s rude!” People are setting examples like quite obviously turning their phone OFF when they walk into a restaurant, and, like me, pulling over and stopping if I take a phone call. Hopefully people will get their act together soon.

My pet hate is people texting when I am talking to them. It’s just rude.

@Megan64 Oh, I like those!

@Megan64 O…that is GREAT!!!!!!

I don’t know the answer to that question because I am not one to talk on the cell when I’m out unless there is something important to say that can’t wait. Some examples are “I’m running late,” “I’ll be home soon,” stuff like that. When I talk to someone I want to give them my full attention. When I’m out shopping or whatever, to me that is not the time to have big conversations with people. Vice versa, when I call someone and they tell me they are shopping, or doing whatever out, I tell them “call me when you get home” or “call me another day.” When I talk to someone, I would like their full attention, the way I would like to give them mine. Unless they tell me it’s ok, or they’re at work and have some time to chat, I don’t want to talk to them when they’re out.

Remember the 100 lb. boom boxes that folks carried around on their shoulders with the volume up to “destroy the eardrums of everyone within a 25 mile radius”?

Or the kids driving with the windows open and the radio turned to equally lethal levels?

I watched an old Seinfeld the other night in which Elaine calls someone from the street, and Jerry and George call it the “most rude, lowest” phone call “because you don’t even have the courtesy to sit down and have a conversation.”

I actually prefer the kids texting all the time because they aren’t speaking out loud.

I no longer have a cell phone. I had one for 2 years. I used it 3 times and then it was stolen from my car. I figured I really didn’t need it.

I really haven’t noticed the “I’m-so-much-more-important-than-you look” you mentioned. I see people so engrossed in their contact with the person at the other end that they pay no attention to anything else. If they are trying to shop or make purchases, they have kind of dazed expression of trying to split their attention.

What bothers me most is the idea that some people seem to need to be attached to someone else at all times. Doesn’t that make it much harder for the individual to develop coping skills alone? Seems to me we’re developing a generation of people who can’t make decisions without a committee to assure them it’s okay.

@marinelife Lets just say that I have been compensated for my relatively bad eyesight ;)

One thing that is overlooked by a lot of people here is that phones are no longer just phones. Now, there are those like @Sunny2that say that they have no need for a cellphone. How about a computer, notepad, game machine, GPS, music player, flashlight, and book? Those who think that phones are only for communicating are living in the last century! In fact, communicating with others is the thing I do least with mine… unless you count this post as communicating. Not much calling, and no texting.

@Dutchess_III People that pretentious are even worse than any cellphone user. “I will make a *huge*production of how I am superior to you!”, or, “I’m going to cut across three lanes of traffic because I am too cheap to buy a hands-free setup!”. The alternative to that second scenario is, “I am so important than you that your call is utterly meaningless.”.
I think we agree that there is no excuse for bad manners, but there is more than one way to be rude. I remember telling quite a few rabid anti-smokers off and threatening to call 911 on a couple of them for letting their moral superiority and sense of etiquette cross the line and come close to criminal threatening;a far worse offense than smoking in a designated smoking area that they could’ve easily avoided.

@gailcalled At least that was limited to kids (and…I was guilty!) The problem with cell phones is that EVERY age seems to have completely lost their manners, from kids to grandmas. I think it’s simply up to us, the parents and grandparents to instill good cell phone manners, just like all other good manners. Cell phones just kind of snuck up on us before we were prepared to deal with it, you know?

@jerv I agree…people can be rude in so many other ways. This problem though, is that people who aren’t generally rude don’t understand how rudely they are behaving. My daughter, for one. She isn’t rude…but she does the damn texting thing while she’s visiting. I finally told her that she needed to stop that, and why, and she did. She just hadn’t thought about it…...