Friday, December 12, 2008

Can You Hear Me Now?

I am having trouble understanding something.

What compels people to have private telephone conversations in public restrooms?

I mean really. Who is so important that you cannot 'finish business' before taking their call?

This may only be a male-thing, as I don't make a habit of hanging-out in women's restrooms, but there's a sub-group of men who seem to have no problem talking on their mobile phone while standing at the urinal or spending time on the toilet.

I find that it's extremely rude to the other restroom patrons, and I am embarrassed to audibly use the facilities while the guy next to me is talking to his mother. I don't feel the need to broadcast the sounds of my bodily functions beyond the restroom walls, especially via a stranger's mobile phone.

Are we Pavlovian conditioned to answer a ringing phone regardless of our situation? Why can't we let a ringing phone wait? I have always worked on the belief that if the phone call's that important, the other party will leave a message or call back later.

Based on the one-sided conversations that I had heard, the calls are often business related. I can only imagine being on the other end of the conversation... "Yeah, we can [PHFFFFT!] get that order of [TINKLE... TINKLE...] widgets out to you [FLUSH!] next week."

Gee thanks buddy; you have taken the phrase 'Nice doing business with you' to a whole new level.