“Just Use Your Common Sense”
October 22, 2008 – 12:09 amI recently returned from a weekend trip to San Diego and as I was waiting to board my flight back to San Francisco, these were the words that I, along with about 20 other people, kept hearing.
“Just use your common sense. Please. Just uuuuuuse your coooommon sense”
A man in his late twenties or early thirties (I am terrible at the age thing) repeated this a few times into an earpiece connected to his Blackberry. He was seated in the gate area with the rest of us, except he had decided to carry on a private conversation in public. At some point most of us have done the same. Thinking that we were talking softly while on our cellphones, while in reality speaking loud enough for at least one other person to hear. BUT, most of us probably would quiet back down again upon making this realization. Not this guy!
In fact, I don’t think he even realized that all of us were listening, let alone laughing at the same time. For some reason it just didn’t register with him that we could and were listening to his hysterical conversation with what I presumed to be his girlfriend.
The gist of it involved Saturday night and various text messages that she had sent him, with him apparently not being able to talk because he had been at a bachelor party. He preceded to read her texts back to her out loud, in case she had forgotten what she had written to him. He implored her “to use your common sense” as to why he had been unable to talk on the phone at 11:30 PM the night of the bachelor party.
This conversation literally went on for at least 10 minutes. This guy made every facial expression imaginable providing quite the show for his audience. Eventually I decided to stop listening because I actually felt a little bad about eavesdropping on a private conversation, even though he had made it practically impossible not to listen in the first place.
A girl among the audience asked a very poignant question: “Are you kidding”? I definitely have to agree with her here as my reaction was the same. I simply couldn’t believe it. I guess the lesson to be learned here is the next time you are at the gate waiting for your flight, on an earpiece connected to your Blackberry, having a private conversation/argument, don’t forget to look up and smile at your audience!
2 Responses to ““Just Use Your Common Sense””
The same type of situation happened to me while I was riding the bus home from work last week. A young woman was talking to her friend very loudly. Another woman and I kept looking at each other as to say to one another “Does this girl have a clue that the whole bus knows her life story – and could care less!?”
By Aliza on Oct 22, 2008