Cell Phone Rudeness

Last night I had an opportunity to teach my 10 year old son a valuable lesson. At first it appeared that the lesson would simply be about cell phone etiquette (timely, since he had earlier asked if he could have a cell phone with actual local access and not just the old one we gave him with 911 access to see how long he could go without losing it), but very quickly I realized that it was really about much more than that. It was about people just being completely unaware that the universe, as our mothers all told us when we were little, does NOT revolve around us.

I know that every generation feels that the next generation's values & manners are in a sad state and I hate to sound like a codger at the tender age of 36, but dang if it doesn't appear to be true. If it's any consolation, my opinion of my own generation is pretty low as well, especially out here in suburbia where the sense of entitlement is overpowering and the coddling of precious can-do-no-wrong-aren't-they-so-CUTE-when-they-screech-like-that children is almost a competition among the SAH's (Stay At Homes). But I digress.

Here's what happened: Last night, EasyE and I went to WallyWorld to try to find a Christmas present for his stepdad. We didn't find anything, but I did pick up some cough drops for a co-worker who has been battling a severe cough this week, and a 2 liter of soda. Since we only had the two items and every lane had quite a line, I figured we'd give the scan-it-yourself lanes a shot.

Now, I have to go into what might seem like a subset issue of this whole thing when it comes to the scan-it-yourself lanes, but it's really all part and parcel of the big problem. In a nutshell, if you've never tried using one of these lanes, the time to NOT do it is when there is a line. If it's really on your list as one of life's must-try's, give it a go on a Monday afternoon at the grocery or something - not on the weekend, and not during the holiday season after work hours. Ditto for letting your kid work the scanner. It's fine to do so if there is nobody waiting in line, but the minute people are going to have to wait for your child to drag that can of soup across the scanner for the fifth time, it's time to take over and wrap up that transaction.

So - back to last night. There were only four stations open for self-serve, which kind of baffled me until I remembered that Wally's self-serve stations don't really work and there is an attendant constantly in motion voiding this, overriding that, and looking vacantly at the monitor with no idea what to do the rest of the time. There was only one woman so I suppose more than four stations would have been difficult.

At one station I pondered going to, there was a woman with at least 25-30 items (limit 20!), having a lot of trouble and getting flustered by her inability to scan. I chose to get in line behind one couple who were finishing up, a cute blonde girl in riding attire (horse, not bike), and another young hippie-ish girl. No problem, we'd be out of there in a flash!

Wrong. As Equestigirl stepped up to start scanning her items, she took her cell phone out and CALLED someone. She didn't answer a call, she dialed and started talking. The other girl in line looked at me with the ever readable facial "what the hell?" look, and then we both settled in to watch this completely unaware person check out her stuff. Unfortunately, she had a bunch of bags of candy, which meant that she didn't have clear, flat surfaces to run over the scanner. This wouldn't be a problem with two hands but she didn't HAVE two hands. She had to struggle with trying to do all of this with her free hand, and of course it didn't work well.

On her second bag, the machine wigged out and went into "call attendant" mode, which took a few minutes because of the aforementioned worker chick's other lane obligations. OK. Try again. One bag scanned, next bag - not so much. Call attendant. This time she had the good grace to at least take the phone away from her ear while she talked to the attendant with the obligatory looks of innocence and bewilderment as to why this wasn't working, she didn't know what happened, etc. Next. At this point, I did say to the girl ahead of me, in a voice that I hoped was audible but not obnoxious, "bet this would be easier with two hands." She snorted.

Time to pay for the purchase. This prompts her to end her call, which I will be doubly grateful for in a moment. Oh, would this be a good time to get out your card? Apparently so. Now me, I have it out before I even get to the scanner but I'm starting to think I'm in the minority with this. She opens her purse, gets out her dayplanner, gets out her card, and swipes. She then extracts her checkbook reconciliation book. She writes in the date ... and "WalMart" (I assume) ... and the amount ... and then does her subtraction ... and puts her card back in her dayplanner, puts it back into her near bursting purse, zips it up, and then looks at the screen which has been waiting for her all this time so that she could - enter her PIN. She gives a bit of a look of surprise, which is completely baffling since I find it hard to believe she's never used her debit card given how many pages of transactions were in her checkbook, enters her PIN, waits for the signature prompt, gets her receipt and bags and turns to us and says, "sorry."

Girl in front of me gets her transaction done in warp time, and we get ours done at similar speed. The guy behind me waited probably half the time for two people to do their stuff as we all did for her.

So, several points of rudeness here. Her cell phone call starts everything off on a bad note and while there is actually a part of me that gives her some benefit of the doubt that she is unsure of the technology and would prefer to look rude over looking slow and stupid, I just don't think that's the case. Cutting her call short as soon as her scanner started acting up would have helped the situation but she chose not to do that - point two. And again, who knows, maybe she was checking in on her terminally ill mother at some predetermined time to make sure that Mom took her medication and was doing OK. Or maybe not. Taking the time to write down her transaction instead of waiting until she was done and out of line? Totally rude. I'm pretty sure that in the time she walked to her car she would not have forgotten the date, the place of the transaction, or how to subtract. She even had a handy dandy receipt that would have reminded her of two of those variables, plus the amount of the transaction. And finally, the lame "sorry" that she gave when she finally left. She didn't give a rat's patootie about her behavior up until then, so the "sorry" rang a little hollow.

In the grand scheme of things, this is not a big deal. It's not earth shattering, and I get that. This one experience is not the issue, it's the aggregate impact of millions of people doing this that causes the problem. Whether it's a matter of truly and consciously feeling that nobody else matters or it's completely oblivious behavior, it's still rude and points to a lack of proper upbringing. And worse, the next generation will be brought up with an even lower expectation bar.

On the other hand, I started this post with the note that I had a chance to teach my son a lesson, so maybe she did me a little favor. And so it goes...