Seated beside me, one of our crew called several friends and her father to announce that she was at Yankee Stadium. Then she hauled her Verizon bill from her purse and rang customer service to dispute some phone charges. I finally asked her to muzzle the damn thing off before she ruined our day off. Men have stood beside me at urinals, wirelessly yammering away. Cell phones have disrupted movies and even a funeral I attended.
Cellular talk is the linguistic equivalent of cigarette smoke.
Just as an exhaled puff of someone else's Marlboro drifts into your nose with or without an invitation, everyone else's issues now float obnoxiously into your ears. One man last summer stank up a busy street corner with details of a bachelor party he attended a few nights earlier. His cellular conversation would have curled Howard Stern's hair. While on an Amtrak train between Philadelphia and New York City, a businessman loudly detailed his company's marketing strategies, conference plans, and other sensitive matters. I finally handed him a piece of paper on which I had bullet-pointed his statements.