😉 Today is another one of those grouchy days
Always and all over the place – at home, when you are travelling, when you are going places by S- or underground train, when you eat, in the restaurant, in the theatre, in the office, during meetings, while you are playing cards, even when you are attending a funeral and perhaps even in the church – you hear cell-phones ringing and vibrating.
Once in a while, you really see people getting active. More than one person flinch. People start looking through their pockets, some of them obviously with a bad conscience. Eventually, one person leaves the room. Or else, the lady sitting opposite starts some hectic typing on her iPhone or Galaxy – either openly or clandestinely under the table.
It is even worse if the gentleman sitting next to me yells into his cell-phone. I have to hear things that I am not in the slightest interested in, or things that embarrass me.
And if, once in a while, it is actually an interesting conversation only half of which I hear, I have to guess at the second half.
But the ”great outdoors“ is also a place where plenty of ”communication“ is taking place.
As I stroll through the pedestrian’s zone, I have to be really careful, lest the matron holding her mobile phone to her ear might not notice and thus simply run into me. In the evening, when I ride my bike home, I often see people deep in conversation who run all over the place, not seeming to even be aware of the fact that they are confusing the pedestrian’s path with the cyclist’s path.
At home, in the “traffic calmed area“, I have to be particularly careful because of some car drivers who hold their cell-phones to one ear (and often have a cigarette in the other hand) and are so focussed on their conversation that they no longer notice us ”minor“ traffic.
Once in a while, I indulge. Those are the times when I sit at home in front of the TV set or in my garden under the sun on my deck chair and read a book. And just as I start enjoying myself, a cell-phone one of my housemates left for reloading or just like that somewhere nearby makes itself known.
And again there is the ringing – for example because another, of course mostly totally unimportant and stupid SMS has been sent to the to-me-alien cell-phone. If then the fixed network devices in our home do not want to abstain and take part in this grotesque game, I get fed up.
What do I do about it?
I have made it my habit to only forward the emails of one particular account onto my cell-phone. As a matter of principle, all acoustical signals (alarms) for the receipt of emails, SMS and all kinds of messages are turned off. Whenever I am in a meeting or similar situation, my cell-phone is turned off. Since I mostly forget to turn it back on afterwards, I get quite a bit of natural protection.
I tell my friends and colleagues that they can always feel free to call me on the mobile phone. But I ask them to only do so when something really important is the matter. And I tell them that I will call back as soon as possible.
If an appointment is not all that critical, like for dinner some time next week, I prefer using email.
And I also only call others when something really important happened.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
The following question comes to mind:
What to do first – the urgent or the important tasks?
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