Apparently this doctor's experience is not unusual. Cut-to-Cure's Dr. Bard-Parker makes the cell-yakking patient Number 1 on his biggest peeve list. (But doctor, I'll jes' die without my cell chat and Jerry Springer!) Via Medpundit, who related an anecdote too funny to leave languishing in a comments section:
Same pet peeves. But I don't feel so insulted by the phone/television issue ever since I saw a patient do the same thing to her priest.She was in the ICU, so I had a full view of her room from the nursing station where I was writing her transfer orders to send her to the floor. She was talking on the phone and watching television while the priest gave her the bread and wine of the Eucharist - on Easter Sunday. And as he walked away from the room, she was still chewing on the Host as she talked on the phone. Unbelievable.
If it transpires that there is such a thing as Purgatory, how long do you think you'd get for this? Or are we talking Hell here?
Some people and their cell phones might actually be conducting business during the endless wait they must endure for the guy with the letters after his name. I'm not taking either side on this one, but Dr. Doctor is not the only one with a business to run, and s/he should recognize that.
Particularly after the 120 minute wait to hear "it's the flu. Here's your hat, and what's your hurry?" Next up on Springer -- why people over 40 would sooner die a wretched death than bother Dr. Doctor with their trifling afflictions.
Posted by: Scott Chaffin on July 18, 2003
The portable phone was long associated with power and status. A lot of people gravitated toward cell phones out of an unarticulated desire to share that panache. Now that everyone has them, you'd think the veneer of importance and prestige ought to be gone...but it isn't.
Public use of a cell phone says to the people around you: "This conversation I'm having is more important than my surroundings...more important than you." We can't help but feel demoted by that implied message. It's of a piece with the anger we feel when a sales clerk in a department store takes a phone call rather than finish serving us.
When I see other ordinary people walking or driving along while talking into a cell phone, I can't help but speculate about whom they're talking to, and about what. I'd bet a week's salary that in most cases it's casual social chatter, not related to business or an emergency of any sort. If others believe this too, it would account for the irritation many feel at "ostentatious" cell phone usage -- especially the sort of usage mentioned in your post.
Still, cell phones are something of a fad. A long-lasting fad, granted. But over time, I hope we'll see a reduction in behavior like this.
Posted by: Francis W. Porretto on July 19, 2003
See your point, Scott, though that wouldn't fly as an excuse in my own doc's case. Never known her to overbook or keep me waiting. I would probably sooner die a wretched death than see a doctor, but that decision would arise from despair at the prospect of having to fight with the insurance company, not doctors' waiting times.
Francis - unfortuantely I don't think the cell phone is a fad that will go away. They are highly useful for some purposes, and as for the mindless chattering purposes - well, people who keep their TVs and radios on constantly - for no other reason than that being left alone in silence with their thoughts makes them nervous and uncomfortable - are not going to give up another useful device facilitating endless distraction.
Agree on the "you don't merit so much as the simplest human courtesy" rudeness attendant on much cell phone use. Ever find yourself chronically blocked in grocery store aisles by people who conference call with their families on every grocery selection? Meanwhile they are blind to the real live humans nearby who foolishly make a claim to share a public space. Cell phones exacerbate that sort of rudeness, but I don't think they cause it. For quite some time I've been noticing a decline in attention to the most rudimentary space-sharing courtesies. You wouldn't think that you'd have to teach people to make allowances for two-way traffic, or to step out of doorways, step to the side in passageways, or otherwise take pains to avoid blocking the free movement of pedestrian traffic when they feel the need to come to a stop and chit-chat with their group, or acquaintances they've run into -
Well, I could go on forever. It's a sorry day when a snarly misanthrope like me has better manners than the oblivioids on the street.
Posted by: Moira on July 19, 2003
The cell phone may get your attention, but I've been ignored in the elevator of blocked in the grocery store aisle dozens and hundreds of times, and cell phones have not had any significanty involvement in this.
Do you get offended when someone uses a pay phone in the same room with you?
Y'all need to get a grip.
Posted by: Gary Utter on July 20, 2003
You don't read very closely, do you, Gary?
Posted by: Moira on July 20, 2003
Then there was the surgeon who called into a non urgent conference on his cell while he was scrubbing in for an operation. The other physicians politely told him to get lost. True story.
Posted by: monkeyspit on July 20, 2003
True story, I swear. How about being in the exam room and the DOCTOR answers a personal call on his cell phone? Without even an, "Excuse me" (let alone an excuse about why it was so important to take this call).
Happened to me. Wasn't my general physician, but a specialist I was seeing for a one-off, but still...
Posted by: cj on July 26, 2003