BBC Radio 5 Live recently published a “moviegoers code of conduct” where Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode collected listener comments on what they consider to be offensive behaviour when watching a film at the cinema – they reduced it to a top 10 list of what you should and shouldn’t do at the cinema.
I keep thinking of this etiquette list when out and about in Brazil, listening to people using their mobile phones in PTT mode. Push to talk isn’t common in the UK – I guess because most people on contracts now have almost-unlimited voice minutes and texts so there is no need to use a low-cost walkie-talkie style service.
But it’s really popular here.
If you ever sat and listened to someone using their mobile phone in a restaurant and thought to yourself, that’s a bit rude to fellow diners, then imagine if the same person was using their phone with the loudspeaker on so you can hear both sides of the conversation, interspersed with annoying bleeps as the broadcast function is transferred from one person to the other. Just like someone using a walkie talkie radio…
That’s what it’s like all over the place here. On the beach, in bars, in restaurants… people use their PTT phones as if it was a normal phone, so the rest of us have to hear bleeps and conversations going on without even asking to be included in them…
Bring back the time when people using mobiles alone was considered poor etiquette…
mark hillary 