| Friends…I need to air a grievance. This pet peeve has been stirring in me for years, but a few weeks ago something happened that sent me over the edge. Since then, I have been reliving the event in my head and wishing that I had said something in the moment. Alas, I kept my comments to myself, and now you are the lucky soul that gets to hear me complain. Ha, sorry. I was recently in a grocery store, and found myself following the same arrows as a very posh woman who was engaging in a conversation via speaker phone. My first reaction (I believe justified) was annoyance at hearing loud, albeit muffled, voices as I selected my avocados and tomatoes and tried to quickly move around this woman. Eventually though, my curiosity got the better of me and I will admit that I lingered over the bananas a bit longer than I needed to as I began to follow the conversation available for the entire grocery store to hear! I deduced that the posh woman (I feel the need to tell you she seemed refined, because I think it adds to the complete contradiction of her ill phone manners) was talking with a girlfriend and by the time we headed down the pasta aisle I got the FULL story of how the woman on the other end of the line was cheating on her husband and how she nearly got caught. Now I will reserve my opinions of how I felt about the adulteress, but what I cannot get out of my head is how this supposed ‘friend’ walked around an entire grocery store, allowing her pals dirty laundry to be spilled to anyone who was as nosy as me to listen! I am positive the cheater was unaware she was on speaker phone (how could she possibly continue with the story knowing that?!), but the posh woman committed a real cardinal sin in my book; she was on speaker phone in a public place. To top this off, the conversation continued into the checkout line, without ANY acknowledgement of the lovely overworked, and underpaid, cashier. By this time I was completely in my own head trying to work up the courage to tap the poshie on the shoulder and ask (loudly), if her friend knew she was talking in a grocery store AND give her a strong scolding about saying hello to the employee helping scan her items. But I didn’t. Maybe you are thinking to yourself, ‘Karla you are overreacting.’ Maybe you are even thinking ‘Karla, you shouldn’t have been so nosy and should have stopped following her in the yogurt section.’ Both statements are true, but I think we need to talk about phone use in public. Look, I totally appreciate being able to communicate and work remotely from anywhere via the great gift Mr. Jobs gave us, but we need a few ground rules. Namely, no more speaker phone in public! We need to keep private conversations private! Ahhhh that feels better. Thank you for listening to me vent. Feel free to send me any grievances that have been eating away at you. xo mm |
