Ban ALL Talking on Transit!

VINCE wrote:
> Bolwerk wrote:
>
>> VINCE wrote:
>>
>>> Bolwerk wrote:
>> Cell phones are still new to society though, so perhaps we haven't
>> adjusted to using them by speaking at a normal volume.
>
> OH PLEASEEEEEEE they been around since the late 1980s true its only been
> maybe the last ten years that they have taken SUCH hold of our lives.
> Long enough anyway/

It's only been in the past five years that almost everybody, no matter
what, has one. Certainly almost anyone under 40.

A few years ago, they were still too expensive to be used frequently,
even if they were widespread. Now every middle schooler has one.

Bolwerk wrote:


> I don't see why cell phone manufacturers don't catch on to this problem
> more. It seems to me more sensitive microphones in the cell phones
> might do the trick.
>
> Cell phones are still new to society though, so perhaps we haven't
> adjusted to using them by speaking at a normal volume.

Part of the problem is lack of feedback of the user's own voice in the
speaker of the cell phone. On a land line phone the user hears his own
voice in the speaker. This causes people to speak louder on a cell phone
than on a land line phone.

> (Also, I have to admit it can be annoying and unintuitive to hear a
> one-way conversion. That's why we notice so much when we see people
> walking down the street talking and don't see an earpiece. It used to be
> that only crazy people would look that way, and now sane people do too.)

If you work in an open office you hear one side of your co-workers'
phone conversations all day long. This doesn't seem to bother people as
much as cell phone conversations.

John Mara

Per John Mara:
>If you work in an open office you hear one side of your co-workers'
>phone conversations all day long. This doesn't seem to bother people as
>much as cell phone conversations.

I find extended phone conversations in a loud voice tb a significant
productivity hit in an office environment. I once told a decision maker that
moving me from a quiet place to another place would diminish my productivity by
25-30 percent. Some people got really bent out of shape over that, but I'll
stand by it - and raise it to 33%, if anything.

Maybe my powers of concentration are below-average or I'm just nosey by nature,
but when somebody's yakking nearby every sentence runs through my mind - whether
I want it to or not. When I was working in an environment where 2/3 of the
people spoke Mandarin, Hindi, or Urdu the difference was appreciable:
conversations in a language I didn't understand just faded into the background
noise.
--
PeteCresswell

Bolwerk wrote:

> Boom boxes, which are much more annoying, are
> still common even after being banned.

Where?

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Bolwerk wrote:
>
>> Boom boxes, which are much more annoying, are
>> still common even after being banned.
>
> Where?

On the subway.

Bolwerk wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > Bolwerk wrote:
> >
> >> Boom boxes, which are much more annoying, are
> >> still common even after being banned.
> >
> > Where?
>
> On the subway.

?? What subways do _you_ ride?

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Bolwerk wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> Bolwerk wrote:
>>>
>>>> Boom boxes, which are much more annoying, are
>>>> still common even after being banned.
>>> Where?
>> On the subway.
>
> ?? What subways do _you_ ride?

Primarily Lex and 8th Ave. It's worse on the 8th Ave. because you get
all those silly dance performances.

AllstonParkingRefu...@m wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > Joseph D. Korman wrote:
> > > Your wife meets you with the car at the train station and it take five
> > > minutes to drive there.
> >
> > (a) Does the train not run according to a schedule?
>
> Maybe the train does but the husband doesn't, so the wife doesn't know
> which train he's on.

Then he can call from the office when he's leaving.

> > (b) Then you can damn well walk home!
>
> A 5 minute drive can easily be a 55 minute walk in some suburbs.

It's 5 minutes just to walk from the phone to the driveway (does anyone
use their garage for storing a car any more? and start the car, so the
station must be across the street.