The cell phone epidemic has got to stop. Cell phones are the most annoying technology of the last century. Why are we so attached to them? Why are we so important that we need to be reached everywhere we go? The answer is we aren’t that important and we shouldn’t be that attached.
Let’s start with the phone plan. The phone company is out to get you. It’s hard to guess how many minutes you’re going to need for a month. Get too many you lose valuable minutes a month, get too few and they charge you an arm and a leg (and everything else) for each minute over.
You never get the plan you need. If you want free nights and weekends you’ll have to give up your anytime minutes. If you want more daytime minutes you’re definitely not getting more anytime minutes. Speaking of which does anyone remember when nighttime started at 6 p.m. or 8 p.m.? How come when you have a plan with no roaming charges they find some way to charge you for roaming anyway?
The family share plans are a joke. (This is where you have up to four phone lines and the family share the minutes.) I know a family who has four phone lines at first they were very careful and kept track of every minute used by each family member. You know how long that lasted; maybe a week. It is very hard to keep track of minutes for one person let alone four people.
There is a cute Cingular commercial explaining now you can get family rollover so those months you spend less minutes it can roll them over to the next month. I can’t imagine a family having extra minutes to rollover. The idea of rolling over extra minutes is great except the people who usually go over their minutes go over every month and have nothing to “roll over”
Another reason cell phones are evil is that I don’t know any service that doesn’t have “problem” areas. You know when you’re talking to someone and all you hear is-Ca-.tomorrow-.sho-.when-.do-.tra. Better yet when you’re in the middle of the conversation and realize that you’ve been talking to yourself for five minutes. You know the dreaded dropped call. Both of these problems are due to the horrible reception. Isn’t it funny to see people hanging their head out windows to find the best reception? Don’t people feel stupid walking in circles like the Can You Hear Me Now guy? And, no I can’t hear you.
I think sometimes people forget that a cell phone is in fact a phone. Simple phone etiquette should be practiced at all times. Phone conversations should not be in public or in front of other people. No one wants to hear your conversation. People often respond to this by saying well you shouldn’t listen. It’s not that I’m trying to listen you’re forcing me to listen. For example when sitting in the computer lab one can’t help hearing you yell at your significant other, who probably can hear every other word because of horrible reception.
People often don’t know when to turn off their phones. No one wants to hear any annoying ring including half of Jay-Z’s new song or the annoying buzz of a vibrating cell. Unless someone is a doctor on call there is no reason a cell phone should be on (or answered) in places such as in class (a personal pet peeve of mine), the office, in church, the movie theater, a play, at dinner, in the car (no matter how safe people think they are, they’re wrong. Just follow behind someone on their cell), the library, the hospital and while in bed with someone else.
So the next time you’re in a coffee shop or answering your phone in the middle of a movie, please stop and think about it. It’s just annoying.