Mobile phone loud speaker

 

Hearing somebody else’s phone call is irritating enough let alone when they have their pissing phone on loudspeaker for the whole world to hear.

I have had two memorable moments when I have wanted to grab their mobile phone and yeet it off in to the distance without a single moment of resentment, thinking about this in hindsight it would have been a public service. These two incidents in question happened once while at work and once while traveling somewhere on the train.

Back where I was working in the office there was one manager who travel between two sites and gained the nickname of “Mr Big-Man” between myself and my fellow colleagues. He just had to be in contact with the opposite office at all times because heaven forbid that something happened while he was not there. Every time he came in and sat at the “hot swap desk”, he would almost like clockwork start talking unnecessarily loudly on his phone about some random bullshit. This normally had the rest of the office find a set of headphones, strap them on and play some music to drown out his voice. During every call there would be a triggering point, the point of no return some might sayd which would be identified when you would hear “hang on let me have a look” followed shortly by “just gonna put you on loudspeaker so I can type”.

It became an instinctual reactions from everybody in earshot once those words were spoken I could then see multiple eyes rolling and irritated faces all in unison happening at once. Everybody I spoke to thought the same thing, firstly stop talking to pissing loudly you don’t need to shout down the phone the microphone and then speaker the other end will do the heavy lifting, talk normally not like your trying to shout to the other office from you seat. Secondly put a headset on nobody wants to know what you are doing in the office we all have stuff to do and don’t need to distracted by the constant wittering and the compressed audio coming out of a world’s worst tinny speaker on your phone.

Moving on from the office, in the not so distant past I had to get on train and mingle with the commuting public to head off to London for a trade show. Let me say this now, I hate London and I hate the public so the thought of having to spend the best part of two hours on different trains did not seem that appealing so I am guessing that part of my response to what happened was a negative self-fulfilling prophecy that I would have a bad time causing my bad mood!

So here I am sitting on train in the trying to look at something on my phone when a chap in the next row of seats starts to make a phone call. Now this is a pretty normal thing when you are not sitting in the “silent carriage”, what made this guy stand out was that he started the call off on loud speaker for the whole carriage to hear him repeatedly keep ringing the same person over and over again, we even got treated to the first second of answerphone too, oh what a treat for us all. The audacity of this person was unimaginable, he just plopped his phone down on the little table and subjected everybody in earshot to his repeated ringing and then eventual call with whoever it was. Mabey I was just in a bad mood, but I really really wanted to post his phone out of the little slot shaped window in every row of seats so it would fall on to the tracks below, even better with him attached too.

If you can identify yourself as one of these people please I beg you just hold the phone up to your ear, you really are not that important and your conversation didn’t need to be shared. Think about other unnecessarily grumpy people around you!