by Sparx

Created on: November 26, 2007

If you're in a restaurant and your cell rings you should answer it. You should briefly find out what the caller wants. From there you have two choices, neither of which is to sit at the table and spend the whole meal loudly holding up one end of a conversation no one wants to hear.

If it's a call you simply have to take (ie a business call), then step away from the dining area to take the call. You won't have to yell to be heard and your fellow diners won't have to hear all about something that is supposed to be personal and private. Your fellow diners also won't have to yell to be heard over your yelling to be heard. No wonder restaurants are so loud these days!

Here's the important part. If it's just someone wanting to chat HANG UP. It's bad enough when the call is important, but no one wants to know about your life.
We don't know you; we don't know your aunt and could care less about her bunions. We don't want to or need to know how drunk you got last night and we definitely don't want to know how successful or not you were at getting laid.

Cell phones have this amazing feature where you can press a few buttons and call the other person back. The intention of this function is that the person owning a cell phone can call people later if they are in a place where talking would be rude.

Another super nifty feature of most cell phones is text messaging. If something simply must be said no matter where you are or what you're doing, this is a fun and polite way to keep the conversation going with that special someone who is much more important to you than the people you are sitting at dinner with.

It does not make you suave or cool to annoy a whole room full of people just because you are too lazy and rude to keep your private conversations private. You look like a loser who has to be yelling into a cell phone just to feel important. Extra loser points for the person who comes in with a group of people and then spends the whole time on their cell talking to someone else.

If you don't have enough common decency to think of the people you are inflicting yourself on, could you at least think about the (soon to be ex) friend that you are forcing to listen to each and every bite you take. How about that important business call? Do you really think you are going to get that client interested in doing business with you? I've been the recipient of far too many calls where I have heard: loud chewing, toilet flushing, gum chewing, nose blowing and loud music. I have been subjected to people trying to conduct business with me while screaming full out, because they were in a crowded restaurant, airport lobby, bus, subway car, train or construction site.

I have ended friendships with these people who did not respect me enough to talk to me in a place without distractions and without having to eat, urinate or scream while talking to me. I have ended business arrangements for the same reason. If I, or the business I represent, is important to you, then you will step away from the table or talk to me later, not yell at me in between loud slobbering bites at the local eatery while mouthing off about how the upset of the other diners is annoying you.

Should cell phones be banned in restaurants? Cell phones should be banned in most public places, period.

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