Hello, clueless? It's me, savvy

Harriet Baskas Travel writer

I might just send a smooch-encrusted fan letter to the folks at the Federal Communications Commission. Perhaps you’d like to add a smooch of your own.

The agency recently announced that, for now, it will keep in place rules banning cell phone use on airplanes. That’s a victory for those of us who have been dreading the idea of enduring long flights belted in between seatmates chatting away on cell phones and worrying about being expected to field work calls while in flight. “I’d rather be strapped to the wing!,” one frequent traveler told me.

Half of all Americans now have cell phones. Someday everyone will. But as use of these handy and sometimes life-saving devices spreads, so too will the incidence of people using their phones inappropriately in public spaces. I recently heard a lawyer in a public restroom stall negotiating the details of her client’s divorce. And as headsets get smaller and smaller I find it harder and harder to tell if someone is trying to strike up a conversation with me or simply calling home to their sweetie.

Except for speaker-phone conference calls and “Grab the upstairs extension, honey” situations, a phone call has traditionally been a between-two-people activity. But the boundaries between public and private have gotten blurry now that we can yak wirelessly on buses, trains and subways, and in restaurants, waiting rooms, theaters and as we roll our carts up and down the supermarket aisles.

This public blabbing is getting bothersome.

Wireless retailer Letstalk.com, which conducts an annual survey about cell phone etiquette, reports that over the past few years we’ve become less tolerant of others using cell phones on public transportation, in restaurants and theaters, and in bathrooms. Joni Blecher, Senior Manager, Content & Community for LetsTalk, doesn’t think those boundaries will “bend very much” when this year’s survey gets underway. If anything, she says, “We’ll see more people more opposed to using cell phones on public transportation.”

So Blecher joins me and travelers everywhere who’ve ever had to listen to someone else’s boring cell phone call in urging everyone to become cell-phone savvy.

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“People need to be mindful of their actions,” says Blecher, “If you’re on a bus or some form of public transportation and feel you must take a call, limit your conversation to two minutes. Don’t go on and on about your day. Not everyone is interested.” She also points out that when you conduct a phone call in a public place you never know who may be listening. “That divorce lawyer in the bathroom stall didn’t know if the lawyer for the other party was in another stall,” now did she?

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