Photo by Flickr user ruba8
Caltrain is generally thought of as a somewhat civilized form of public transportation. People get on, open their laptops, read their newspapers, and generally keep to themselves. The one exception? Cell phones. For some reason, people forget that when they are riding on the train and talking on their phones, other people — lots of other people — can hear them.
A month or two ago, I sat in front of a man who was on the phone with his best friend’s girlfriend — whom he had recently slept with. He was trying to convince the woman to leave the friend and hang out with him.
On a recent morning, a very impassioned woman on the SB 220 was on the phone with her boyfriend. Things… things did not seem to be going well in this love affair.
“It’s not the drugs, it’s not the alcohol. It’s you,” she said into the phone. “It’s always about you. I need you to agree not to call and harass me at work anymore”
I will give this woman credit — for whatever the drama was, she managed to maintain an infuriatingly calm tone throughout the conversation.
And so it continued.
“You promised you’d never put your hands on me. And last Friday night you did. You promised you’d never raise your voice to me. And you did. You promise me you’d never put me on a bus when I was drunk — and you gave me money when I was wasted and left me on the bus.”
[Side note: It probably says something about a relationship that the boyfriend promised the girlfriend not to put her on the bus when she was drunk, in the first place.]
From there, there was discussion of how he hadn’t picked up a recent phone call when she’d been in an accident, and how it could have been a call to say she was dead, but that he was too busy to answer the phone.
And then finally, the kicker: “I just can’t do this anymore.”
All in all, probably a good decision on her part. Dating someone who promises not to put you on Muni when drunk and then goes back on their word — that’s unforgivable.
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Caltrain is notorious for loud cell phone conversations. It was worse during summer ’08 when the gas prices spiked. I think all those people thought they were still in their car. On more then several occasions people had to remind the cell phone talkers that they are in a public space. It’s still pretty bad, but not nearly as bad as that summer.
Also, for awhile there was a guy that use to rap along with whatever crappy music he was listening to on his ipod. It was entertaining for the first 30 secs, not the following 3 weeks.
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My lifestyle is alternative enough that I’m used to people being intrigued/freaked out when I discuss it with people, so it doesn’t make much difference to me whether I’m discussing it with somebody in person or on the ‘phone. In fact, I’ve never quite understood the push against using mobile phones on transit—there’s never been any push against conversations with people who are there in real life! What’s the difference? (It’s worth suggesting to some people, though, that if they need to speak so loudly into their ‘phone, they probably need a better ‘phone.)
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Mike Reply:
March 31st, 2010 at 10:09 am
It’s a psychological thing that happens with a cell phone (or phone in general) that causes people to take exceptionally loud. If they are having a normal conversation, then I usually can ignore it. I get equally upset with people who sit next to each other (or worse one in front of the other) and feel the need to yell like they are across the room.
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I wish my work shuttle had conversations this interesting.
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I don’t ride Caltrain often, so I’m unaware of such things. But I have to wonder: Are the trains relatively quiet? I’m just wondering whether that makes other people’s cell phone conversations that much more audible. Don’t get me wrong; I know there are plenty of public-space abusers out there. I just wonder if you’re hearing these conversations because the train is quieter than, say, a Muni bus.
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I would say that Caltrain is typically quieter than either Muni or Bart, particularly during commute hours. The other thing to remember about Caltrain, particularly the bullets, it they only top every 10 minutes or so. So there are long periods of no announcements, no stopping, no one getting on or off.
I’ve heard some crazy conversations on Muni, but none so clearly as this one.
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People speak loudly on cell phones because unlike regular phones they cannot hear their own voices through the earpiece, thus they don’t have good feedback that the sound of their voice successfully carried through to the listener.
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jeff Reply:
April 1st, 2010 at 5:01 pm
this wins the “Most level-headed comment on the site today” award. Thanks, Matt!
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