Ooey Gooey® : Communicate : Tom's Corner

Communicate : Tom's Corner

November 17, 2005
Do Cell Phones Make Us Deaf??

This is my observation of many people in restaurants, on the airplane, in airport gate areas, and various other public places. You watch and see if you observe the same scenario.

The scene goes like this....you are enjoying a nice meal at a restaurant and there is another table of adults sitting two tables over also enjoying a nice meal. Both tables are engaged in conversation however you really don't notice what they are saying because you are busy talking and they are not talking loud enough to disrupt you...THEN the dreaded cell phone rings and all of a sudden everyone (both tables) are being tortured into listening to the one sided conversation of the person on the phone because they have raised their volume level several notches!!! It's bad enough that they have to disrupt the people they are with, but why do they have to talk loud enough to overshadow conversations at other tables too!!

This is about the time you want to go up, grab the cell phone out of their hand, turn it off, and throw it back in their face. You don't because you are civil.

My big question is....If they were able to talk normally with the people at their table prior to the phone call, why did they have to get so loud while on the phone?? Maybe they have a physical handicap that requires them to increase their speech level when they put something up to their ear, or maybe they think that talking into a device so small, they have to compensate with volume in order for the recipient to hear, or maybe they are just plain rude like the people who use the walkie talkie version of their phone just to annoy everyone within a two state radius!!

Comments and Answers to my questions are more than welcome. Please send an email to--tom@ooeygooey.com