Cell Phone Etiquette for Freaking Morons

Over the past few days, I've been following news about pre-ordering Star Wars: The Old Republic. This, happily, includes following Twitter for juicy tidbits of info.  A tweet by @grumpygamer tonight reminded me of some of the abject cell phone stupidity that I've seen. Of course, I just had to write up a blog post about it for you, my Trusty Friends.

He tweeted this:

grumpygamer 

Guy on the train talking on his cellphone just gave out his entire credit card number. Trying to figure out what I should buy tonight.

He's not the first one who's heard a credit card being given out.  I regularly hear conversations with all sorts of fascinating information.  In fact, if I were a National Enquirer reporter, I'd just sit on one of the commuter trains in Chicago, New York, or Washington, DC and listen to people talk on their cell phones. I'd have enough information in 2 hours of rush hour traffic to fill 15 issues at least.  Unfortunately, you can't do that in LA because everyone is still stuck somewhere in "Carmageddon". They might get out of their traffic jam in about, oh, 18.2 years.

So, let's review the basic rules of Cell Phone Etiquette for Freaking Morons.

1. Don't text and drive. If you must text and drive, stay the heck off my roads, and by "my roads" I mean "all roads in the contiguous lower 48 United States, and Alaska and Hawaii because they're totally cool, too."  This especially goes for the chicky who ran into us last New Year's Eve because she was looking at her phone instead of the road in front of her while driving 50 mph. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Good thing her dad had great insurance coverage.

2. Don't give your credit card number out over the phone in the middle of a crowd of people.  You may as well stand on the 50 yard line of the Superbowl with a mic and yell, "Hi! My name is Joe Moron! My credit card number is 0000-3333-0000-3333 (note: not a real number), and the expiration date is 2/2011. Have a GREAT time ordering crap off eBay, Amazon, and all the porn sites you can imagine on my tab!" 

3. Don't give out your clients' personal info over the phone while sitting in an airport. This actually happened when I was at O'Hare waiting on a flight.. A guy in a row in front of me rattled off the name, full address, and phone number of one of his clients--in the MIDDLE OF THE BUSIEST AIRPORT IN THE WORLD.  I thought about copying down all the info and handing it to him, and then asking for his business card so that I could make sure never to do business with him. EVER.

4. Turn off your phone in church, or at LEAST silence the darn ringer! I can assure you that the soloist singing "Ave Maria" will do just fine without your ringtone accompaniment of Lady Gaga's "Born this Way". 

5. Turn off your ringer in the doctor's office. I honestly had a patient SITTING IN THE CHAIR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE EXAM answer his phone and talk about what pizza toppings he was going to order that night (pepperoni and mushroom if you care to know).  He wasn't even polite enough to ask me if I'd like some, too.

6. Turn off the text notification while in the doctor's office. The temptation to look at it and reply is apparently too great for some of you. I was trying to take the medical history of a patient when she decided to answer a text. She kept her phone between her legs and tried to hide the fact that she was typing in her response while (not) answering my questions. I had the distinct urge to a. grab the phone and throw it across the room or b. tell her "You know, if you've got your hands frantically moving between your legs, it usually means one of two things, both of which don't need to be done in public. By the way, you're doing a crap job of trying to hide that you're texting. How about you go do that in the waiting room until you've figured out that Facebook can wait 15 FREAKING MINUTES while I do your exam?"  Somehow, I maintained a little more control.

7. Your inability to hear your conversation due to crowd noise around you does not translate into our need to hear you answer at the volume of 220 decibels. 

8. Contrary to popular opinion, I really CAN live without hearing the following:

• How drunk you got last night
• How much you puked after getting drunk last night
• What color your puke was after getting drunk last night
• How much of an ass your spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend is
• Or, worse, ARGUING with your spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend--with wars, famine, and weather catastrophes, no one really cares about your petty problems.
• Where and when you're meeting your meth dealer
• Your conversation with the 900 sex talk girl
• Which friend is sleeping with what other friend, or breaking up with what friend, or is getting un-invited to what friend's party--if I want a soap opera, I'll watch "The Young and the Restless", thank you.
• How unfair it was that you just got fired, and then a discussion of what happened before you got fired. Protip: if you're defending your action, a. it probably was stupid, and b. you deserved to get fired for it.

9. Texting while in the middle of a candlelight dinner at a fancy restaurant is Right Out, even if you're texting your date.

10. Turn your phone's ringer off during operas, all theater performances, school concerts, speeches, and other public events. People, shockingly, pay to hear the performance, not you. I guarantee you if your phone rings during a play and an actor on stage stops in the middle of his Hamlet soliloquy to make a snarky comment to you, I will laugh my butt off, and then cheer when you get escorted out by security.

11. Do not eat and text. You will get ketchup on your keys.

12. Do not take photos of your nether regions with your cell phone camera, upload them, and then send copies to all your friends. As a medical professional who's worked in hospitals for many years, I've seen it all, and I guarantee you that your junk is not in any way remotely comparable to Chippendale men. I will not be in awe. I will squint at that tiny thing and giggle.

Related articles

• How to Avoid Common Cell Phone Scams with the Help of WhackANumber.com (prweb.com)
• eEtiquette - 101 Guidelines for the Digital World (freetech4teachers.com)
• Teen driver using cell phone killed in Harris Co. wreck (chron.com)
• Rules for Etiquette (socyberty.com)

How to pack geeky for a vacation

We left this morning for our trip to Disney World. This was the culmination of a week of frenzied activity, including, but not limited to, untold loads of dishes because I cleaned out the rotter drawer in the bottom of the fridge, arcing the microwave into electrical oblivion, and doing so many loads of wash that we broke the belt on our dryer and blew 2 fuses. In addition, it involved two meetings with doctors and driving an hour one way to see my 83 year old grandma. It also meant packing enough for four people for a week.

This is no mere task for the faint of geeky heart.

Normal people make a packing list that starts with the following: shirts, shorts, socks, underwear, toothpaste, toothbrush, comb, brush, medications, sunglasses, sunscreen (but only in a 3 oz package or less, and it must fit into a 1 quart ziploc bag), hat, makeup, deodorant, shoes, swimsuit, and flipflops. Throw in a snack or two for the trip so that you don't have to eat the gawdawful crap that gets passed off as 'food' on airplanes. Plain unsalted rice cakes taste like gourmet meals in comparison, for heaven's sake. We did lose a jar of peanut butter and a small container of cheese spread. It was over the 3 oz. mark, despite the fact that they'd never been opened. Apparently these 2 items fell under the 'gels, aerosols, and liquids' category as determined by the TSA. I'm not entirely sure how you could blow up a plane with an 8 oz. jar of Jif peanut butter and a 4 oz. container of Bucky Badger Bacon Cheddar spread, but I'm sure some creative chemist could come up with something. Never underestimate American ingenuity--we are the people who brought Desperate Housewives to the airwaves, after all.

Anyway, the Geeky Packing List ends with the items listed above, almost as if they're afterthoughts to The Really Important Things, which are, of course, electronic devices. Our packing list started with these items:
All 3 Nintendo DS lites, including carrying cases, earbuds, games (LOTS of games), rechargers, and extra styluses
Laptop, charger, mouse, and mouse pad
Power strip because the outlet is always about 2.2 mm farther away than the regular cord will reach
An extra extension cord because we have to recharge all 3 DS's played on the flight
All 4 iPods, earbuds, and cords to plug into the wall or laptop to recharge
Both cell phones and chargers
Laptop case with extra batteries and two Terry Goodkind novels in case I managed to use up the battery in the DS.
My notepad for my fanny pack so that I can jot down notes for my fantasy novel that I'm working on, The Dragonfighters.
Digital camera
Extra digital card in case something happens to the first one
Extra batteries
Extra batteries
Extra batteries
3 sets of binoculars, because we like birding. If fact, they came in handy tonight for viewing the sandhill cranes and fish crows from our balcony while it poured outside.
Enriched Rice Dream rice milk in the juice box size for my daughter, who has a dairy allergy.



My shopping list for the week included a DS charger because we couldn't find the third one (it's in the house. Somewhere.) When you have a kid in middle school and another in elementary school, these things have a tendancy to 'disappear', although likely that third charger will show up under someone's bed the day we return home. My shopping list also included an extra stylus pack. Those things evaporate faster than strawberry shortcake on a hot summer day does in our house. One of these years, I'll lift up the sofa cushions and discover an entire stylus farm has sprouted and is just waiting to be harvested.

After entertaining TSA with the spaghetti bowl of cords in my laptop bag, we got through with minimal trouble other than losing the above mentioned peanut butter and cheese spread. I hope they at least donated them to a food pantry instead of throwing them in the trash.

The Pirates of the Caribbean ride beckons to me to come ride it tomorrow, which means getting up early. I'm heading to bed, albeit without my white noise maker to drown out the loud-speaking neighbors....