People on the phone

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I find people talking on the phone near me really distracting. How much does it (or doesn't it) bother you?

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Type: Discussion • Score: 18 • Views: 3,462 • Replies: 50

[+4] - Thomas - 12/21/2009Ha! By "sunset", you mean this one, right? [IMG]http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll88/guthobla/A2K/IMG_0256.jpg[/IMG] ... and by "admiring the sunset", you mean, like...
[+3] - Thomas - 12/17/2009[quote="MsOlga"]Yes. Or they have some sort of fixation on their cell phone?[/quote] Maybe it's not a fixation. According to a recent article on Dilbert.com, who you think of as...

@littlek,

depends honestly. Like today I was at walmart. this woman was talking rather loud and about some problems I could have gone the rest of my life not knowing about her and her rash.

On the flip side if its non intrusive to me then I dont mind at all.

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@littlek,

Dys and Diane and I went out to lunch recently and the restaurant was nearly empty. In came a guy who was seated behind us. We had to stop talking because he was near yelling into the phone. Some people seem to thing you have to yell to be heard. As I'm hard of hearing, as they say, it could be that he was talking to a person with such difficulty, but my guess was that he just yells on phones. That was very bothersome.

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You know, I'm of an age that when I hear people talking to themselves I just assume they're crazy. Nowadays they're talking on a hands-free phone. Everywhere. I think some people are simply incapable of being quiet/still/alone.

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@ossobuco,

think, I meant think...

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@Tai Chi,

Quote:

I think some people are simply incapable of being quiet/still/alone.

Yes. Or they have some sort of fixation on their cell phone? Which I can't, for the life of me, understand. I mean the people who are constantly fiddling with them, checking for new calls, or messages, I suppose? Or those who interrupt a conversation they've been having with you, to answer their call (lasting 5 minutes or longer Rolling Eyes

). Often (by the sound of the conversation you can't avoid hearing) the call hasn't exactly been urgent.

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Ah, yes, it does depend on volume for me. I have gotten used to hands-free walk-n-talkers. I am not only talking about strangers on cell phones. My mother is a loud phone talker. She'll come and sit in the room we're all watching tv in and chat. Though, that doesn't happen that often. I've had two recent (one current) loud talkers as housemates. But I've had many housemates who don't chat loudly or who are phone-in-the-bedroom people.

I have this feeling that it has to do with my bad hearing. I have trained myself to listen carefully to people talking so that I can pick up faster if they're talking to me. Maybe, maybe not. Hmm.

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WHat bothers me are the wanderers. At work everyone has to take their cell phones away from the general work area which leaves them the hallway to chat.

Invariably I get someone who takes up the whole hall as I am trying to walk down it and can't get by without saying something because they are so focused on their call they have no idea I'm there. We even have some empty offices they can use for their call, so it's not like they don't have anywhere else they can hang out while they are on the phone.

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@littlek,

Some of my worst memories of 2008 involve sharing an office with a sales guy talking to customers while I was trying to concentrate on a spreadsheet with complicated actuarial work in it. For a while, I thought working conditions were their lowest point of my professional career.

Then they moved us into an open plan office, with a dozen salespeople in the cubicles around mine.

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I find it unsettling that every place you go, people are on the phone. If they aren't talking they are playing games.

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@Thomas,

I used to seethe when I was doing concentrated design work and people a few desks away in open plan were roisterous... and I was on deadline looking at a lot of late night hours. It was hard to unseethe and be civil, but I worked at it, getting them eventually to quiet down on these occasions with a kind of wave and covering my ears, half smiling. (Grit..) but at first I had to go over to them and explain the difficulty.

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@ossobuco,

Quote:

We had to stop talking because he was near yelling into the phone.

Another good reason why everyone should follow Om's advice and carry a handgun.

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@Thomas,

Ya see? Things can always get worse.

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@littlek,

Oh, those things. Yeah, people will stand right in front of you and talk to you, or someone. If I see one of those damn things sticking out of their ear, I'll generally just wander off. If they have something important to say, they can catch up and spit it out. If they don't, nothing lost.

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@littlek,

It depends on where I am.

In the library? Yes.
On the subway? Yes. Some people can get a limited signal underground.
In the doctor's waiting room? Yes.

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no matter where i am, i just drown 'em out with music on my headphones, adjusting the volume accordingly...

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@Region Philbis,

Region Philbis wrote:

no matter where i am, i just drown 'em out with music on my headphones, adjusting the volume accordingly...

Deaf dog walkin'.

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@msolga,

msolga wrote:

Quote:
I think some people are simply incapable of being quiet/still/alone.

Yes. Or they have some sort of fixation on their cell phone? Which I can't, for the life of me, understand. I mean the people who are constantly fiddling with them, checking for new calls, or messages, I suppose? Or those who interrupt a conversation they've been having with you, to answer their call (lasting 5 minutes or longer ). Often (by the sound of the conversation you can't avoid hearing) the call hasn't exactly been urgent.

Phones!!!

It's as though they are more important than the person who is THERE.

I'll ignore a phone ringing if I am having an important conversation with someone, unless I know I am about to get an urgent call, and it freaks them out.

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@dlowan,

dlowan wrote:

It's as though they are more important than the person who is THERE.

I'll ignore a phone ringing if I am having an important conversation with someone, unless I know I am about to get an urgent call, and it freaks them out.

yeesh.

That's my main peeve in a nutshell.

I would glance at the phone to see who was calling, in case it is an emergency. And what I mean by emergency is EMERGENCY, as in someone is on their way to the hospital.

This is why, when I had a landline, I refused to have call waiting. I'm not going to put somone on hold, giving them a loud and clear message that they are so unimportant to me that any random thing will divert my attention from them.

If I'm put on hold like that, I'll wait maybe 15 seconds, giving the other person the opportunity to explain they are on another line. After that, I hang up.

Runner up is what others have said, about people being on their phone ALL the time.
Can't you go any length of time without constant natter?

I think this is screwing up some people ability to discern what is important, and what is not.
It seems like it's ALL important.

Before you know it, you're more concerned with what the latest development on Tiger is, rather than what's going on in Darfur.

1 Reply

@chai2,

Quote:

This is why, when I had a landline, I refused to have call waiting. I'm not going to put somone on hold, giving them a loud and clear message that they are so unimportant to me that any random thing will divert my attention from them.

I think that call waiting is very important. There were many times when I was waiting for an important call (landline), and Mr. P. was yakking on the phone with one of his buddies. Before I got call waiting, I would bust until he got off the phone. Now the call waiting has made this problem a non-issue.

I have call waiting on both cell and landlines. If someone calls me while I am on another call, I will tell the 2nd caller that I will get back to him as soon as I am free. I would never hang up on someone to talk to another person, unless we were ready to end the call anyway.

If the 2nd call IS important, I would explain the situation to the 1st caller, before I hung up on her.

1 Reply

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