I remember way back  in the day  when my favorite bumper sticker and mantra was “Hang up and drive!”      That was a long time ago and I have pretty much conceded that people are going to talk on their phones and  drive even if they are endangering my life at the same time and I should just shut up about it.   That is just the risk I take by leaving the house.   But technologically-powered discourteousness is making me crazy!

Phone calls.

Since when is every single possible person who might call us more important than the person with whom we are having a meeting, or lunch, or coffee?   Yes, there are emergencies.   There are super-important business calls that you must take or lose your job.   There are reasons to occasionally take a call when you are with other people, but is your entire life really that much of a crisis?   Must all the time I spend with you be listening to conversations you are having with other people?   Yes, it was really great to get to catch up with you, while I listened in on all those other calls…

AND-please do not schedule a meeting with me with one of those ear-phones hooked up.   I cannot stand finding out that the reply you just gave me was a totally different conversation with some one else and that you had disconnected from our conversation without so much as a ringtone or an “excuse me.”   Yikes!

Don’t get  me started on call-waiting.   I have loathed it for as long as I can remember, especially when some one calls ME and then takes other calls.   Are you kidding?   And  after 20 years of enduring it, I have never known one horrid emergency I was put on “waiting” for, not one.  

Text this.

Texting in public  is the newest way to be rude, to “whisper” something in front of other people.    Remember the old saying “Secrets don’t make friends”?   Now it is “Texting doesn’t make friends.”   Unless, of course, you’re the friend getting the text.  

My son-in-law, Tristan, told me that the new business protocol says to look at texting like doing a crossword puzzle.   If you’re in a situation where it would be inappropriate to do a crossword puzzle, then it is also not the right time to be texting.   That would include a job interview, a meeting at work, and when you have set up a time to hang out with a friend, for crying out loud!   It is the newest way to scan the room for some one better to talk to.   Lately, a lot of people are doing crossword puzzles while they are talking to me.   I fantasize having them over for an evening of me doing Sudoku.

I am not totally without a sense of humor about this.   Just mostly.

Text Messaging is Rude by Rick Reyes  

These things: ignoring people, paying no attention to others, taking no notice of people close by, disregarding, overlooking, discounting, turning your back on people, snubbing, disrespecting, being indifferent, being disdainful, neglecting, being bad-mannered and acting indecorously – these are all rude, whether you are doing it the old-fashioned way or using the latest techno-powered gadgets to accomplish it.

She rants.