Hang-Up: Sociological Perspectives and Conceptions

¶ … HANG-UP": SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES and CONCEPTIONS

In her article, "Major Hang-Up" Elizabeth Wolff details the efforts of one New

York City merchant to enforce politeness and consideration in his store. Since a particularly rude customer held up a line of customers by refusing to interrupt her cell phone conversation to complete a transaction, the owner of the business instituted a new rule banning all cell phone use in his store. Likewise, many restaurants in New York also prohibit cell phone use, as do movie theaters, libraries, hospitals, aircraft, and even health clubs.

From the perspective of logical necessity, certain cell phone bans make perfect sense, but others do not. Hospitals have a legitimate reason in restricting cell phone use, as do airlines, because their transmissions might disrupt sensitive communications between medical monitoring devices and aircraft navigation systems. Libraries and movie theaters have the same legitimate interest in prohibiting cell phone conversations that they have in prohibiting open-air conversations between people, because overheard verbal exchanges are disruptive to people studying quietly or trying to listen to movie dialogue. In fact, that is precisely the reason that libraries have always posted signs asking people to talk softly and that is why people sometimes have confrontations in movie theaters when one party insists on talking loudly during the movie.

Admittedly, many cell phone users are so rude, that they ignore common sense and basic rules of common courtesy and respect for others in the way that they continue loud conversations even when they are disruptive and annoying to everybody around them. In fact, the problem is so widespread that store and restaurant owners have overreacted, apparently, out of the inaccurate conception that any use of a cell phone on their premises is rude.

In fact, cell phone use is only rude and inappropriate where the speaker either talks too loudly or ignores delays caused by their conversations. If there is nothing wrong with carrying on a conversation at a restaurant table in person, why would it be any worse to speak in the same tone of voice and volume into a cell phone? If someone talks so loudly to a friend in person that their voices are annoying to other diners, that would justify managerial instructions to lower their voices to an appropriate volume.

On the other hand, why would an appropriately quiet conversation on a cell phone be more annoying than a normal conversation of the type ordinarily permitted between diners? Similarly, in the example given by the store owner in the article, the cell phone user whose conduct precipitated the ban had held up the line of customers behind her to finish her phone conversation. Would the same inconsiderate behavior have been perfectly acceptable if she had been talking to a friend in person instead of on a cell phone when she refused to conduct her transaction at the register before finishing her conversation? Would the store owner have been right to ban all conversations in his store as a response?