I wouldn't expect anyone to sit through a long bus or train ride sitting still with arms folded in their lap, doing nothing. That's unrealistic and boring. Still, as a fellow passenger, I would expect you to be courteous and keep the sound you produce to a minimum.
If you wear earphones or headphones, try to make sure other people can't also hear it. If you keep getting text message alerts, keep the volume low, or better yet, keep your phone on vibrate. And if you get a call, for the love of interstate transit, keep it short! Few people are as irksome as the Long Talker. Not only do they insist on carrying on a conversations for extended periods of time, but often, they are annoyingly loud and embarrassingly candid. I don't want to know about the server from Chili's you hooked up with or the colonoscopy you have planned for the end of the week. Yuck, yuck and yuck! Guys and girls alike are guilty of this offense, and far too often, it will be a guy talking to a girl or vice-versa. Ugh...seriously, sweetheart, your schmoopy can wait.
What the Long Talker fails to realize is that public transportation is still very public, and though cell phone laws are generally unwritten, there are some guidelines, I find, that are based on common courtesy:
1. Leave it short! Said it once before but it bears repeating. A five minute call should be your
maximum.
2. Try to use your indoor voice. If you find this is difficult given your connection, this is all the more reason to curtail your calls.
3. No gruesome details. Keep it G to PG rated. No cursing. No sexually explicit language. And may God have mercy on your soul if you even once utter the words "hemorrhoids" or "diarrhea."
4. Reserve the right to call the other person back. Unless you are talking to Barack Obama or waiting for test results to find out if you have cancer, tell the person you will call them back at a more convenient time. If they don't understand, well, quite frankly, they're probably not worth talking to.
If you are a Long Talker, you might think this doesn't matter, but let me tell you, it does get annoying. Who knows what kind of catastrophic effects that might have? That irritation might just keep being paid forward for the rest of day, getting a whole office or city ticked off. Forget six degrees of separation...this is six degrees of frustration!
Have you ever encountered the Long Talker? How did you react?
Lifetime
Comments (3)
ugh.. that's bugging out... i don't even like small talk that much there's nothing u can do about it
This is why I'm glad iPods wee invented. I'm not very confrontational when I'm on vacation because it changes that air of adventure and turns it more into "getting from point A to point B" and I like to just chill out and not have to worry about anything and just let shit happen as if does. But if I encounter the long talker and I feel myself turing back into the asshole I am in every day life(haha) I'll remove myself from the situation or turn up my iTunes and drown it out.
Ive actually had someone sitting across from me ask me to turn down my iPod after turning it up because of THEM talking. Unreal.
it only annoys me when I have my headphones on with music and I can still hear someone talking on the phone...