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Originally Posted by Anneke  Once in a while I'll do talks at various events and a cell phone rings and some idiot actually answers. I stop, smile and wait for the call to be over. Because I'm so polite (artifically so), they usually get the point and it doesn't happen again. Next thing I know everyone is checking their cell phones. But then again, we're Canadian up here!  |
When I'm teaching class, I stop dead and stare at any student whose phone rings. Everyone turns and looks. The student will be desperately digging for the phone to shut it off, getting redder and redder in the face. When the noise stops, I keep going more or less as though nothing had happened. I also put "TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE!" on the syllabus in boldface, which helps minimally.
I can't say the video store thing is on my radar, because I don't frequent them, but I do get irritated by the supermarket version. "Honey, do we need eggs? Uh huh. How about butter? Milk?" and on and on through the whole store. I can see one or two things, sure: you spot a good price on something and aren't sure if you already have a bunch, so you check. But can't you make a shopping list for most things?
I'm bracing myself for the end of my sabbatical year in Japan. Everyone here has and adores cell phones, but over the last decade some standard etiquette has developed. You don't use them in restaurants, although it's OK in fast food joints. You don't use them while interacting with an actual human being -- thus you can yap on your phone while you wait in the supermarket checkout line, but when you get to the register you stop. They're forbidden on most public transportation, except for inter-city trains, and there you're supposed to use them only in the separated-off spaces at the joins between cars, although you can text-message to your heart's content wherever. All this means that cell phones are ubiquitous in Japan, but really not all that intrusive or annoying.