Anxiety Aunt: Is it acceptable to be on FaceTime or speaker phone in a busy public place?

Dear Aunty,

I frequent my local cafe regularly and usually sit at an outside table. It’s a popular place so is usually noisy but it’s a happy, busy atmosphere and we don’t mind. Last weekend my husband and I met a friend there for her birthday, she’s 77 and we’re all getting a little hard of hearing, especially when it’s noisy. We usually just talk louder. However, on this occasion a young mum with a toddler came and sat at the table next to us with her phone on speaker. She was on FaceTime with someone. She propped the phone on her water bottle and proceeded to have a very loud conversation. We all then found it hard to hear each other. I almost said something but didn’t in the end. The person on the other end of the phone was even louder than the woman at the table. Is this bad cafe etiquette? If I get a call at a cafe, I move away to avoid disturbing others. What would your advice be if this happens again?

Yours Annoyed

Dear Annoyed,

Oh, it will happen again, my dear, it’s just a matter of where and when.

Your Aunt isn’t a fan of willy-nilly rules for everything but One would definitely consider a ban on being on speaker phone or FaceTime when in busy public places because it is rude, inconsiderate and smacks of self-entitlement.

One has seen people on FaceTime while wandering around shopping centres and airports. One has even seen it inside cinemas and on planes before take-off and again after landing.

If we were meant to spend our lives FaceTiming, evolution would have seen to it that our ears were at the front of our face and our eyes moved to the sides. But no, instead evolution is rewarding us with some kind of permanent horn thing on the back of our skulls because we all spend too long with our heads pointed down staring at our phones. Surely, if there was ever a warning against too much screen time, that is it!

And while in your anecdote it was a young woman, in your Aunt’s experience this kind of obnoxious behaviour transcends generations. And it’s not just FaceTiming or talking on speaker phone that is problematic; in the wrong environment even just having your screen illuminated is out of line.

One was recently at the theatre for a junior dance recital (the things One does for One’s neighbours) where One witnessed a mother to One’s right tell her teenage son to put his phone away when the gentleman to One’s left (of baby boomer age) dug out his own phone.

He then proceeded to check his WhatsApp messages throughout the live performance.

One’s blood pressure was already on the boil when he had the audacity to turn on his phone torch to check the program. It was like sitting next to a human lighthouse.

One could not get over his lack of respect for the young performers whose moment on stage was being hijacked by someone with enough life experience to know better but the selfishness not to care.

During a short break in performances, One took the opportunity to turn to the teen on One’s right and loudly exclaim: “well done on resisting the urge to touch your phone young man, if only others WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER would follow your example”.

The older gent then gave your Aunt the stink eye and a loud “harrumph” before grudgingly shoving his phone in his pocket.

The curtain wasn’t even down before he’d retrieved it and was straight back on the WhatsApp chat. Probably complaining about an interfering old biddy at a theatre show.

Hopefully karma steps in and his horn grows quicker than anyone else’s, although maybe it was the horn that had him on WhatsApp talking to some would-be lady love. Good luck to her!

But back to you, Annoyed. While evolution is certainly making changes to our physiology, it seems it can’t meet our desire to transmit messages using only our minds. So, the only way to get people to realise their behaviour is unacceptable, causing offence or annoyance, is to speak up.

You don’t have to be rude or confrontational about it, but if we all just sit in silence then the FaceTime set will only get emboldened and louder.