So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[GHT]

When you are out shopping or going about your business and Karen or Ken talk loudly on their phone so the whole store or street can hear the one sided conversation. Inevitably it will the most trivial and boring detail that you really don't want to hear. How I appreciate those who take their phone outside when they get a call.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^^
Yeah, I, too, find that annoying.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

When you are out shopping or going about your business and Karen or Ken talk loudly on their phone so the whole store or street can hear the one sided conversation. Inevitably it will the most trivial and boring detail that you really don't want to hear. How I appreciate those who take their phone outside when they get a call.

And the ones that hold the phone horizontally with the bottom of the phone pointing towards their mouth while the party at the other end is heard through the phone's speaker! Then you're treated to both ends of the call.

 

[rogueclimber]

When you are out shopping or going about your business and Karen or Ken talk loudly on their phone so the whole store or street can hear the one sided conversation. Inevitably it will the most trivial and boring detail that you really don't want to hear. How I appreciate those who take their phone outside when they get a call.

Even worse when they facetime with no airpods and you hear both sides of the conversation

 

[Benny Holiday]

Here you get to hear both sides of the conversation yelled in Arabic.

 

[GHT]

^^^^^^^
Yeah, I, too, find that annoying.

And the ones that hold the phone horizontally with the bottom of the phone pointing towards their mouth while the party at the other end is heard through the phone's speaker! Then you're treated to both ends of the call.

Even worse when they facetime with no airpods and you hear both sides of the conversation

Here you get to hear both sides of the conversation yelled in Arabic.

Thank you all for your responses, much appreciated. It would seem that telephone etiquette, or more precisely, the lack of it, knows no boundaries.
An example of that lack of etiquette is when someone tunes out completely, while looking into their phone, as though nothing and no one exists.
Have you ever been dining out and seen a fellow diner photograph their meal and text it on, adding what it is they are having? Honestly, imbecilic moron is just too complimentary!

 

[rogueclimber]

Have you ever been dining out and seen a fellow diner photograph their meal and text it on

Though to be honest I clicked a quick picture of my beverage at dinner last night then later posted it here on TFL...

 

[LizzieMaine]

Not having any of this technology myself, I can never get use to the spectacle of a grown adult striding purposefully down the street having a loud, vigorous one-sided conversation over the recent results of his colonoscopy.

 

[tonyb]

More than once I’ve thought that people on cell phone conversations were addressing me, until I turned around and saw that, no, they were just being boorish and treating every person within earshot to what we’d rather not be hearing.

 

[GHT]

Not having any of this technology myself, I can never get use to the spectacle of a grown adult striding purposefully down the street having a loud, vigorous one-sided conversation over the recent results of his colonoscopy.

The image that conjures up. There are some types that just love to talk about their inner workings, and in graphic detail. Cell phones have given them an audience, so now we all know about MoviPrep , a laxative used to clear the bowel before your colonoscopy or flexible sigmoidoscopy.
Gross!

 

[Trenchfriend]

2024, and it finally happens in our smalltown, too. Wasting electricity, although a papersheet still does the job, too.

 

[Zombie_61]

2024, and it finally happens in our smalltown, too. Wasting electricity, although a papersheet still does the job, too.

I'm convinced there is at least one generation of humans that doesn't know how to do anything without their cellphones. Cellphones are becoming the new human brain; we don't need to remember anything but how to look something up on these ridiculous devices. Now, more than ever before in human history, are we empty-headed creatures with cell after cell of wasted gray matter in our heads just waiting to be called into action to remember something. But no, as long as that person has a cell phone in his/her hand, there's no longer need for a working brain.

 

[LizzieMaine]

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

I'm convinced there is at least one generation of humans that doesn't know how to do anything without their cellphones. Cellphones are becoming the new human brain; we don't need to remember anything but how to look something up on these ridiculous devices. Now, more than ever before in human history, are we empty-headed creatures with cell after cell of wasted gray matter in our heads just waiting to be called into action to remember something. But no, as long as that person has a cell phone in his/her hand, there's no longer need for a working brain.

"This new-fangled thing called 'writing' and cuneiform! What's the world coming to?" - Ada of Sumeria, 3200 BC

 

[tonyb]

It’s true that with each new technology some older skills fall by the wayside. My handwriting sucks, but that’s of little consequence anymore. There remain people, all these centuries after the development of the printing press, who have committed to memory every word of the Bible or Koran, but really, what good is that doing anyone? (Anyone other than the hopelessly superstitious who think such “devotion” will earn a ticket to Paradise.)

It’s also true, I think, that such ready access to information as recent digital communications technologies offer trivializes that information and fosters superficial (at best) understandings. That’s a concern, but it’s not that most people haven’t always been satisfied with superficiality.

We could cite examples from here to next Tuesday.

I still use pen and paper shopping lists, because I find it LESS cumbersome than putting the lists on my iPhone. But I frequently consult my phone in the supermarket for recipes.

My regular supermarket has me using digital coupons. It takes a little getting used to, but I’m not about to forgo the savings. And really, it’s nearly effortless, once a person learns how to do it.

 

[Trenchfriend]

But the good thing is still our german overaging, keeping us safe from real digitalization.

We got so less youngsters and so much retirees here, that you simply cannot establish digital infrastructure 2.0 and must preserve our 90s world, where papersheets and ballpens still do the job. And plain old telephone.

 

[LizzieMaine]

At work we went to an e-ticket system as an option several years ago in which the patron can opt to receive their admission ticket by email and then open it up on their phone to have it scanned at the door. Or, they could just step up to the box office window and buy a regular paper ticket.

Result: people with e-tickets arrive, have to pause at the door, have to open their email app, have to search for the ticket, have to ask their companion to check THEIR phone because maybe they ordered on the other account, have to find the email, have to open the email, have to press the button that says GET TICKET, have to enlarge the ticket image on the screen to bring up the bar code, have to have it scanned, have to brighten the image on the screen because the scan didn't work, have to have it re-scanned, have to hold it at a better angle and have it re-scanned, and finally, only then, do they get to enter.

Meanwhile, the person who just bought a regular paper ticket walks up to the other side of the door, hands it to the person ripping tickets, takes their stub, and walks in.

Technology sure is swell. (At this point I actively warn people away from e-ticketing if they don't want to deal with all the rigamarole.)

 

[tonyb]

Taken a commercial airline flight lately? It appears that digital boarding passes are rapidly supplanting the paper version. And it also appears that the people using the digital pass have it ready to scan without holding up the process at all.

 

[GHT]

Technology sure is swell. (At this point I actively warn people away from e-ticketing if they don't want to deal with all the rigamarole.)

Is technology really an unexplored frontier, filled with endless possibilities that offer us a fresh glimpse at the efficiency of the future? Or is it deceptive, in which we focus so much the aesthetics, that we fail to recognise technology brings nothing new to the table? Could it be that technology is merely the appearance of innovation, and once we break through this image, we disappointingly find there is nothing substantial or new behind it?

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^
I trust those are rhetorical questions.

This forum couldn’t exist without these newfangled technologies. Does it “bring nothing new to the table”?

Yes, as I’ve already noted, something is lost. But something is gained, too. My little enterprise couldn’t exist without digital communications technologies. These days, that’s true of businesses of all sizes. As our friend Art Fawcett put it nearly 20 years ago, you either get aboard that train or you get run over by it.