I think using a cellphone in a public restroom is creepy. I’m all for multi-tasking, but even for an inveterate multi-tasker like me, there are limits. My thought is that if you’re on a phone call while nature is calling you either tell your caller, “I’ll call you back,” or you wait to use the restroom until your call is done. But that’s just me.
But I’ve come to realize that not everyone agrees with this. For example not long ago I was at a conference at a hotel in Dallas and, as it happened, I needed to use the restroom. The restroom was empty except for one guy at the end of a long row of urinals talking on his cell phone. When I was done, without really thinking, I flushed and as I went to wash my hands the other guy was glaring at me.
“That was really rude,” he said.
I’m not the world’s fastest thinker, especially in the men’s’ room. I looked around, wondering who he was talking to but I was the only other guy in the room. “Huh?” I said stupidly.
“That was really rude,” he repeated. “You saw I’m on the phone and you flushed anyway. I couldn’t hear what my client was saying. That’s really rude.”
What I wanted to say was that talking to a client while you’re using the men’s’ is rude, but this was not a conversation that I wanted to have. “It’s a men’s room,” I said shortly, as though I was making a telling point, but he just shook his head with contempt. As I left the guy was at the sink on another call so I flushed a urinal on the way out, just out of spite.
Later that day I went to Subway to grab a sandwich for lunch, and I went to the soda fountain to get a Diet Coke. As is the case with most Subway restaurants, this store was tiny and the soda machine was barely inches away from a table where a fat man was clearly trying to eat a foot-long sub with as few bites as possible while talking on his cell phone.
I always put a lot of ice in my Diet Cokes, and as the ice cascaded noisily into my cup I heard the fat man say, “I’m on the phone.” Wondering, I turned around; he was glaring at me with angry, porcine eyes and his mouth was still full. “I can’t hear with you making that racket,” he said nasally; I shrugged and refrained from dumping my Diet Coke on him as I walked by.
Later that night I went to the hotel fitness room to go for a run. There were only two treadmills in the room, about 6 inches apart, and one was occupied by a middle aged woman who was walking at 2 miles per hour while she talked on her cell phone.
“Two miles an hour?” I thought, taking the other treadmill. “Really?” I was thinking that bridesmaids walk faster but I put it out of my mind and began to run. Since the treadmill was very rickety each time my foot hit the tread the sound reverberated through the small room.
I never expected what came next. With no warning the woman reached over and pushed the emergency stop button on my treadmill, very nearly catapulting me over the front of the treadmill — but I managed to catch myself in time. “What the fuck…..” I began.
“I can’t finish my conversation with all that noise,” said the woman, with a smug, self-satisfied smirk. “Where were you raised? In a barn?”