Have you ever secretly wished this would happen?
Sakinah Aaron was walking into the bus area at the Wheaton Metro station several weeks ago, talking loudly on her Motorola cell phone. A little too loudly for Officer George Saoutis of the Metro Transit Police.
The police officer told Aaron, who is five months pregnant, to lower her voice. She told the officer he had no right to tell her how to speak into her cell phone.
Their verbal dispute quickly escalated, and Saoutis grabbed Aaron by the arm and pushed her to the ground. He handcuffed the 23-year-old woman, called for backup and took her to a cell where she was held for three hours before being released to her aunt. She was charged with two misdemeanors: “disorderly manner that disturbed the public peace” and resisting arrest.
Ok, maybe it is going too far for the police to ARREST someone talking loudly in public on a cell phone. It seems like I see this kind of oblivious behavior more often. It is usually a woman, talking so loudly that everyone around her has stopped in their tracks to try to understand why she is shouting. I think our society is becoming more and more detached from each other.
On a strange and funnier note, I observed a woman talking loudly on her cell phone, oblivious to others, last year at….a church Christmas program at our lutheran day school!!! The pastor was up front and it was quite obvious to everyone else that this was a real worship service and not just a cute little kids concert. But this woman just jabbered on and on during the service. Finally, a man was brave enough to get up from his seat and walk over to her to ask her to take her conversation out in the hall. That’s my funniest cell phone story. What’s yours?
It’s always great when someone walking behind me starts talking on their phone. Either I think they’re talking to me or I know they’re not, but pretend they are anyway.
(Them) “Hey, how’s it going?”
(Me) “Pretty good.” -looks back-
(Them) “So what are you up to tonight?”
(Me) “Not much, just some homework.”
Sometime later they hang up, I’m still giving them funny looks.
(Them) “What?”
Brian,
I like your style!!!
My problem isn’t so much the people who yell into their phone as those who are so into their convo that they forget there is anyone else out there. I had one lady actually run me over with a shopping cart, and stop talking just long enough to say ” in a hurry, on the phone”, smile and run off! oph and the negligant drivers are nice too
The best response I ever came across to this situation was someone who reported sitting on a train, sat opposite a man talking loudly into his mobile phone about the details of some doubtless stupendously large and important business deal (you know the sort of thing: “Yah, Jemima, Frankfurt are pressing us to get Zurich onboard pronto, or we may need to switch over to a mixed derivatives structure. Yah, that’s right, New York’ll go nuts if that happens. Anyway, my train’s due in to London at 12.30 my time, 12.30 your time - let’s talk then”)
The unwilling eavesdropper proceeded to get out a pen and paper and to write down what the bloke was saying, at which point he broke off his conversation and said to her, aggressively, “Hey, that’s confidential information!”
“Not now it’s not,” she replied.