plumtreeblossom (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
plumtreeblossom) wrote2007-07-06 02:36 pm
plumtreeblossom) wrote2007-07-06 02:36 pm
I'm In Yer Sound Range, Hatin' Yer Tawk
Observation:
We live in a cell phone world, but it was a mistake to let phone booths fade into history. We need them back, to spare us from public-private conversations.
Go absolutely anywhere, and you will be privy to one side of any number of conversations. You'll hear the details of the GYN appointment, the meta about dinner, the helicopter parent micro-managing their college student. There's a young woman who is usually on my morning bus with an impossibly high-pitched voice, who spends the entire ride talking to Sweetie. "What are you doing now Sweetie? Are you having breakfast? Are you having a banana, or cereal, Sweetie? What did you say, Sweetie? I can't hear you cuz we hit a bump..." I picture Sweetie as a hairy and corpulent semi-employed truck driver in dirty boxer shorts, perhaps driving his roommate crazy with his "uuhs" and "whatevahs."
Outside the home, we used to have lots of small glass boxes just for telephone calls. They afforded a measure of privacy for the caller, and acted as a partial sound barrier so that those outside the box weren't subjected to a conversation they weren't supposed to be hearing.
At work, as a courtesy to all in our open floor plan office, if we get a call on our cell phone that isn't work-related we take it out in the hall. But try having a phone conversation out in the hall, where there are 7 or 8 other people having a phone conversation out in the hall. You can't hear yourself think.
I would delight at seeing booths resurrected for those courteous enough to have at least some of their cell phone conversation inside the booths. The booths don't need to even have landline phones in them. Just a privacy booth. Privacy. I'd use it.
Sometimes I worry how far we actually are from open floor plan public restrooms...
We live in a cell phone world, but it was a mistake to let phone booths fade into history. We need them back, to spare us from public-private conversations.
Go absolutely anywhere, and you will be privy to one side of any number of conversations. You'll hear the details of the GYN appointment, the meta about dinner, the helicopter parent micro-managing their college student. There's a young woman who is usually on my morning bus with an impossibly high-pitched voice, who spends the entire ride talking to Sweetie. "What are you doing now Sweetie? Are you having breakfast? Are you having a banana, or cereal, Sweetie? What did you say, Sweetie? I can't hear you cuz we hit a bump..." I picture Sweetie as a hairy and corpulent semi-employed truck driver in dirty boxer shorts, perhaps driving his roommate crazy with his "uuhs" and "whatevahs."
Outside the home, we used to have lots of small glass boxes just for telephone calls. They afforded a measure of privacy for the caller, and acted as a partial sound barrier so that those outside the box weren't subjected to a conversation they weren't supposed to be hearing.
At work, as a courtesy to all in our open floor plan office, if we get a call on our cell phone that isn't work-related we take it out in the hall. But try having a phone conversation out in the hall, where there are 7 or 8 other people having a phone conversation out in the hall. You can't hear yourself think.
I would delight at seeing booths resurrected for those courteous enough to have at least some of their cell phone conversation inside the booths. The booths don't need to even have landline phones in them. Just a privacy booth. Privacy. I'd use it.
Sometimes I worry how far we actually are from open floor plan public restrooms...
no subject
"Hi Hun, I find that I'm still stuck late at the office. Can you tell little johnny that daddy can't make it to his game? Oh, you're cooking dinner for me? Well, it's really busy here, I'll get someplace to deliver me a sandwich or something. Don't know when I'll be back to the house, likely after midnight, again. I can hear the baby crying, so I'll let you attend to her. Bye"
hang up, dial. "Hi doll. where do you want to go? I have to stop at my apartment to shower and change, then I can pick you up and we can have a real night on the town....."
I was purely floored. Here's this guy, obviously living with his wife and kids, and not only has a lover on the side but an apartment where he can pretend to be a single playboy. Who knows who else might be on that subway car overhearing his nefarious schemes? What an idiot!
no subject
you should have hit on him, found out his name and number, and then called his wife and told her everything.
what an asshole!!!