Mobile Annoyances

One of life's more modern annoyances are ring tones.

We have all experienced that modern phenomena of the 'mobile' phone that is now immobile, and that is seemingly now permanently attached to its umbilical cord of a charger, and lying on an office desk. Its owner never takes it with them, so when the owners of these devices are away, the phone rings through its cycle until the caller gives up, only to retry 30 seconds or less later.

Modern Mobile Annoyances

But its not actually the ring tones themselves, which are often more embarrassing than annoying (speaking as a man who has had the Darth Vader tune as his phone ring for 20 yrs or so .... eek), but the other incidental alarm, keypad and alert tones, that some people seem determined to keep, or are too lazy to remove.

Recently I was sat next to a woman who was standing in the train aisles and who was texting repeated messages. She had her phone on full volume, and every press of the keypad produced a loud clicking sound. As she was a double finger speed texter, this meant that all around her were subjected to a loud cacophony of clicks and clacks. These were only interrupted by brief pauses while she awaited responses from her mails, and these were announced by a loud message alert, following which, another loud burst of the cacophony of clicks and clacks would ensue.

This lasted for about 30 minutes before either she ran out of people to text, or replies to respond to. It was, incredibly annoying and made book reading almost impossible unless wearing ear plugs ..... who would have guessed 30 yrs ago that I would be writing about this as an aggravation?

How the world has changed in my lifetime ......