SubscribeI'm actually curious as to what the Cydonian was getting at. I wouldn't be surprised if etiquette is very different in Asian cultures, particularly those on Mars, which must have diverged from their terrestrial antecedents a long time ago.Oh, the time-lag is hell. Especially for those inter-planetary calls. You speak into the speakerphone once and then wait for another twenty minutes before you get a reply. Heard things were slightly better in the northern plateaus, but I'm sure that's a placebo effect, mostly because the average temperatures there approach terrestrial levels.
Just because you can talk anywhere doesn't mean you should talk anywhere. A cell phone is a mobile phone, not a public phone. Find a private place to conduct your call or do it when you get home.I don't understand this line of thinking either. Again, I'm sure it's just me, but I find making calls when I'm home a dreadful waste of my time; there are so many more things you can do at home. If I want to have a twenty-minute chat with my friend in Ougadougou, and if my commute is exactly twenty-minutes, etiquette concerns aside, wouldn't it make sense to make that call while I'm commuting?
That's a very specific definition of rude that I'm not familiar with. My understanding of rudeness is that it's willfully careless about other people's sensitivities in the context of social conventions... I'd be interested to see if you could find dictionary support or someone else to agree with you about this distinction.I was about to brush our disagreement off as mere semantics, but then I read this:
Anyway, basically, rudeness is when someone does something that annoys the person or persons around them when they are expected to “know better”.I suppose there are shades of that Ask versus Guess cultures distinction we were reading here in Jan. :-) Just to take that thesis a bit forward, I suppose I was coming from an Ask POV; if nobody says they're bothered, then they aren't, and hence, what you were doing wasn't rude. You seem to be coming from a Guess Point-of-View; you seem to be saying that it's more polite to guess if others would be inconvenienced and then change our actions accordingly.
On the issue of interrupting in-person conversations to take a cellphone call, there seems to be a broad divergence of opinion. Personally, I think that this practice is socially untenable and an artifact of how recent it is that there is constant availability of phone access.Oh, I'm rather irritated by this. I think it'll show extremely badly on a person if s/he takes an extended call while they're speaking with someone; I would presume that they aren't interested in the conversation, and are looking at getting out for some reason. Personally, I'd think the polite way would be to answer the phone, quickly say, "I'll call you back!", put the phone down and get back to your earlier conversation. That way, you'll avoid a fate worse than not answering calls, getting calls from someone who won't give up.
But I was never the kid who did his homework in front of the TV. I did it in total silence, in my room, with the door closed.You know, I was this kid; I was the quietest of the lot, I preferred solitude, silence and no distractions. I then came to university, and decided to study in a really quiet place, the library. I can't tell you how hell-ish that was; my normal thought-processes somehow got side-tracked, I couldn't concentrate on work, and in fact, began dreading that cold, dark, impersonal hellhole.
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posted by maxwelton at 12:43 PM on November 4, 2007