I'd be willing to bet, however, that the acceptability of loud public cell-phone calls varies by borough, neighborhood and even street within New York itself. For example, it's definitely OK to yak away in public in lower Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and anywhere in Midtown. It's probably not OK in the West Village, Staten Island, the Upper East Side and elsewhere.
South of San Francisco, in Silicon Valley, it's quite acceptable to use a cell phone anytime, anywhere, as long as it's for business. But personal calls are frowned upon. North of San Francisco, in Marin County, personal calls are OK, as long as you keep them short and aren't too loud, but business calls are frowned upon.
It also varies by person. My own dad carries a cell phone strictly for emergencies. He won't give anyone the number. When he sees a public cell-phone conversation, it seems to him like rude behavior. My own kids, who grew up with cell phones, don't see public cell-phone conversations as rude at all and make and receive calls and text messages like they're bodily functions.
People talk about cell-phone etiquette as if it's possible to establish simple rules that apply to all situations. In fact, geographical, cultural, generational and situational variations make fair and reasonable rules hard to come by.
Every time I write about cell phone usage on, say, airplanes and other forms of public transportation, I always get lots of e-mail from people who express some variation on the following two notions:
- "I don't want to hear other people's conversations."
- "It's wrong for people to be available and connected 24/7. People should be able to survive for a few hours without yakking on the phone."
Irritation with public cell-phone loudmouths and annoying ring tones builds up, and when given the opportunity -- such as when responding to a cell phone-happy columnist -- many people unleash that frustration in a tirade of denunciations that feels like moral clarity and common sense. Unfortunately, it's not so simple. Human psychology is the complicating factor.
General theory of relative cell phone irritation
I have a theory about what makes public cell-phone calls irritating. I've noticed that in a crowded room, where pretty much everyone is talking, a cell-phone call within earshot is much more problematic than in-person conversations. People think cell calls tend to be louder. But I've noticed more irritation at quieter cell calls than people feel at louder in-person conversations. It's usually not voice volume that annoys us. It's something else.
My theory is that evolution has prepared us to constantly hear other people's conversations, to be comfortable with them and even crave them. To be in a restaurant where people are talking is pleasurable for people. Our brains can simultaneously ignore and monitor these conversations. If one conversation turns to an interesting subject, we automatically eavesdrop.
For example, we don't notice when someone at the table next to ours says, "my husband had a knee-replacement operation last year." But suddenly we tune in when someone says, "my husband had a sex-change operation last year." The person they say it to might respond with something like, "Oh ... my ... God."
However, when someone is talking on the phone, we hear only half the conversation. We hear only, "Oh ... my ... God" and don't know what the person is responding to. This annoys us because we have to hear the noise generated by a person's vocal chords without being privy to the juicy details of their conversation. In other words, the potential for eavesdropping is an evolutionary, hardwired compensation for putting up with other people's chatter. With cell-phone calls, we get the noise without the compensation, and that's why it irritates us.