Ring my bell, ring my bell

And that's pretty much the only line I know from that retro song.

Daisy and I were on our way to a coffee summit with Lethal and Sunflower last nite. Arrived a bit early so we popped by next door to A&W to have some dinner.

After the cashier had rung through Daisy's and had finished taking my order, the girl's cell phone rang. She was animatedly conversing with whoever was on the phone while finishing my order. Handing me back my change one-handed, pacing back and forth waiting for my order to finish. It was a pretty long conversation, at least a good 7 minutes or so, all in Polish/Czech/some kind of eastern European language. From the tone of her voice, though, it was pretty clear the call was not an emergency matter. She was just shooting the breeze with a friend. Daisy and I had taken a booth and began happily munching away, discussing how it's interesting what people can and can't get away with on the job.

But we had spoken too soon.

A man whipped through the kitchen door, bellowing "Hey ____, you can get fired for that, you know? And I WILL terminate you if I catch you doing that again."

The poor girl was mortified. But I don't think the fact that she had done wrong had sunk into her brain quite yet. She left the counter and went to confer with another coworker.

How did he know?

Other girl: He must've seen you through the chute.

Why didn't you tell me?

Other girl: Sorry, I didn't think you'd get in trouble for that.

I have no idea whether or not the other girl was just trying to be easy on the girl, or if she honestly had no clue that personal conversations (via celly, no less) were an occupational faux pas.

Ah well, now they know.

And in other celly contemplations, I realized how cordless phones and cellies are horrible means of having an argument. Not that I had an argument with anyone last nite, so I truly have no idea why the idea popped into my head.

But if you think about it, when you're really really pissed off there is just something soooooo satisfying about slamming the phone down on someone. Almost the equivalent of delivering some kind of physical strike. With a cordless, all you hear when you hang up is a "beep." Nothing very impressive about that, and not the same effect at all.

It's even worse on a cell phone. They probably won't even realize you hung up on them in a fit of anger until they look at their call timer and realize that it has stopped. *mockingly* Ooooh, harsh, that's really telling me off! There's a bit of satisfaction perhaps in knowing that they went on venting for a few minutes or so to nobody, making a fool of themselves. But one would hope that people wouldn't argue over a cell phone in the first place. It's not the right time, and more likely than not, never the appropriate place.

I guess the only way to get around that loss of emphasis using today's technology would be to childishly scream into the phone before hanging up. What a stoopid option.