Subject: [NEXTEL-1] JUST WHEN you think things can't possibly get any more annoying in Cell Phone Hell

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 04:07:26 -0400

Push To Talk Hell
Contributed by mmasnick on Thurs, Sept 11 2003

Last week, a friend suggested to me that the new push-to-talk hype is going to
lead to mobile phone etiquette
hell. It seems others are coming to the same conclusion. If you thought it was bad
enough that you had to
listen to one side of the conversation, now you get to listen to both sides. Even
worse, voices can spring up at
any time. Sure, you can turn it off, but as we've seen with mobile phones and
ringers, people just don't do that.
As the article points out, push-to-talk may be the "evil spawn of the speaker
phone". If you can't stand the guy
in the cubicle next to you who always has his conversations on speaker phone,
imagine when you have to hear
his conversations everywhere you go. How long until we start seeing articles about
the awful etiquette of all
those "new" PTTers?
===============================================================================
Walkie-talkie phones share too much info
Kevin Cowherd

Originally published Sep 11, 2003

JUST WHEN you think things can't possibly get any more annoying in Cell Phone
Hell, they find a way to stoke the flames a little higher.

Case in point: the walkie-talkie feature.

The walkie-talkie feature, of course, raises the question: What's worse than
listening to someone having a loud, boring cell phone conversation in public?

And the answer is: listening to both ends of that loud, boring cell phone
conversation.
Yes, that's right, with the walkie-talkie feature, the level of pointless cell
phone chatter we're exposed to every day is rising dramatically.

A man walking down the bread aisle of his local supermarket can now, at the push
of a button, consult his wife about whether to bring home a loaf of rye or whole
wheat.

Great. And all the other shoppers around him will have to endure this wonderful
conversation, as the wife says "And make sure you don't bring home pumpernickel.
You bought pumpernickel last time, and you know what that does to me."
Oh, this is great, great progress.

From what I understand, Nextel has had the walkie-talkie feature with its Direct
Connect program for quite a while, and now Verizon Wireless is jumping on the
bandwagon with its "Push to Talk" feature.

Terrific.

And you can bet the rest of the cell phone companies will be jumping into the
market if enough consumers actually want this stupid thing, which they will,
because this is the land of people throwing money at stupid things.
The walkie-talkie feature is, in a sense, the evil spawn of the speaker phone.

Let's face it, is there anything worse than being in an office with someone who
gets a call and puts it on the speaker phone, just to show you what a big shot he
is?

And now you have to sit there and listen to both sides of some dopey conversation
that doesn't concern you in the slightest?
The last time this happened to me, I was in a doctor's office getting a
prescription when the phone rang.
The doctor answered, put it on speaker phone, and proceeded to have a five-minute
conversation with some lab technician about another patient's spleen.

Look, I wouldn't be interested if the conversation was about my own spleen. So to
sit there and listen to them talk about someone else's spleen, well, it was pure
torture.

It caused me great pain and, on some level, I'm sure, that doctor was violating
the Hippocratic oath.
Anecdotal evidence suggests the walkie-talkie feature appeals mainly to guys,
which is not exactly a stop-the-presses revelation.

In fact, on its Web site, Verizon Wireless advertises its new feature with a
picture of a young, spiky-haired, nattily dressed executive talking walkie-talkie
style into his cell phone and smiling.

And just to show that blue-collar guys go for this, too, there's another picture
of a construction worker with a hard hat who's barking into his walkie-talkie
phone, like maybe he's saying: "Hey, where's that load of bricks? It was supposed
to be here hours ago!"

Oh, sure, they also threw in the obligatory picture of a woman using the
walkie-talkie feature. Only her picture is an inset, about one-quarter the size of
the guys' pictures.

Plus, from the expression on her face, it doesn't really look like she's into the
whole walkie-talkie thing.
It almost looks like she's pressing the little button and thinking: God, this is
so stupid! Why can't we just use it like any other cell phone?!

Whereas the guys - even the hassled construction worker - look like they're using
the walkie-talkie and thinking: This is so cool! It's like when we were kids and
played Army guy!

Which is exactly the point.

It's the whole GI Joe thing again for guys when they use this. And now they don't
even have to slather boot-black under their eyes and go in the woods and sneak
behind trees and pretend to shoot each other.

The other thing I've noticed about the walkie-talkie feature is that it has a
heavy appeal for guys who wear the little holsters for their cell phones.

Why, some guys even wear dual holsters now for their cell phones and pagers,
making them look like modern-day gunslingers in Dockers slacks.

When these multi-holster guys walk around with their ear-buds, the little wires
that allow you to talk on your cell phone without using your hands, they always
remind me of a Secret Service detail sweeping into a building ahead of the
president.
Anyway, Verizon Wireless now promises coast-to-coast coverage with its
walkie-talkie feature, which means you can be in Baltimore and, with the push of a
button, you can be annoying someone in, say, California.

And annoying everyone within hearing distance of that person, too.
Particularly if the conversation turns to a stranger's spleen.
http://www.sunspot.net/features/lifestyle/bal-to.cowherd11sep11,0,1420263.column?coll=bal-features-columnists

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