No respect

Cellphones - you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them. Well, you can actually,but it’s more convenient to not to. Reasonably, I think.

When they’ve got introduced a couple of years ago and became affordable by everybody (not at last because the providers realized they could make more money by lowering the prices). Suddenly, almost over night, the majority of all people became nearly instantly available. You can directly call everybody if you have their number. And mostly everybody likes that direct attention and the amazed feeling when someone is calling you. Like in the good old days, just everywhere, every time.

And the every time is what I’ve got a problem with.

It now happened a couple of times, that the following happened:

You’re sitting in a café, having a chat with a friend. Suddenly your friend’s phone is ringing. And your friends is talking to the caller for some minutes.

This is disrespectful in a couple of ways. Unless it’s an emergency (where you still could explain why you have to take the call), it’s rude. If the caller would be there in person, he would certainly not heavily interrupt the talk that way and more likely wait to interrupt at a more appropriate time. But why isn’t this the normal behavior I experience? I’d say it’s more likely that the ability to take a call and get some personal satisfaction out of that (like a social relationship confirmation).

On the other hand it kills every flow in the talk. The phone owner is suddenly drawn into a completely different talk and you’re left alone, only able to listen and watch on that discussion, almost without any possibility to interrupt - because that would be rude. Do you get my point?

There are some arguments to take the phone as well, like

• It could be important.

• It could be important.

• It could be …

When was the last time it was actually important? See, the problem about the argumentation for taking the call is, that there might be a possibility of a situation which you don’t know before you’ve actually taken the call. So I find it quite hard to justify to take a call when you don’t know what’s about. And there are alternatives, like SMS, Mailbox and calling again to indicate that you really need to take the phone right now.

Additionally: not taking the phone seems to most people be an option when they don’t want to talk to the caller right in that moment. It could be important becomes a bit of a flexible argument then. Right.

There are places and situation where I don’t take a call:

• When I have a good time

• Places with bad reception

• When I’m listening to Music or watching a movie

• When I don’t care

These are moments when I will call back. My mobile phone is not my personal BAT-Phone.

I personally enjoy rejecting a call and watch the irritated expression of my friends face when I tell them: “What? We’re talking! They’ll call again if it’s important.”.

This never lead to a discussion about that topic, though. Maybe because it could be quite hard to prove me wrong on this one, couldn’t it?

Or Maybe next time I should just stand up and go to a stranger at the bar and start talking there. Would that be rude?

Thanks for you attention.