Coffee Shop Etiquette

“If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people,” said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University. “The cellphone talker thinks his rights go above that of people around him, and the jammer thinks his are the more important rights.”  NY Times, Devices Enforce Silence of Cellphones, Illegally

Yesterday afternoon, after a leisurely brunch, Nicole and I settled down on a brown leather couch in a nearby coffee shop. Nicole had a good deal of homework to finish, mostly textbook reading, and I was making every effort to relax and recharge my batteries post-GRE-Literature test and pre-Cartooning for Peace, by reading the Sunday Times and old copies of Poets and Writers magazine.

Reading and studying is going extremely well for about an hour. Everyone around us is likewise engaged, either with text books, novels or laptops.

Then, one girl sitting behind me answers her cell phone. She begins to talk. Loudly. About the wedding she just went to, what her bridesmaid’s dress looked like and the hot guy at the reception that she hooked up with. Ten minutes later, she starts to talk about her applications to graduate school, complete with citations of her GMAT scores and her GPA and which schools she feels are a lock.

Nicole and I are seated closest to this young woman, but everyone in our half of the coffee shop are glancing up at her, even the people wearing head phones. It is clear that this girl is irritating every single person in the room, yet is completely unaware.

Nicole and I began a very quiet debate about whether or not we could ask this young woman to take her conversation outside. I was held back by the fact that I was reading for pleasure and not studying, so why should my rights over rule hers. Nicole looked around for a sign on the wall that indicated cell phones were not welcome in that space, but could not find any.

So what is the proper etiquette? Clearly, this girl was violating the unspoken agreement that everyone else in the room was following; all conversations should be conducted in a near whisper. Would the staff of the coffee shop have supported us if we had spoken up? It seems like this is one of those grey areas that Miss Manners never quite got around to covering. Clearly, the “polite” procedure would have been for the young woman to take her phone call outside, but barring that, what is the polite way for a by-stander to ask someone to take their phone call elsewhere?