Mysterious Encounters

[rheasilvia]

A little while ago, I was sitting in my favorite tea house, happily drinking tea and reading Guardian fanfic on my tablet, as you do. The woman at a neighboring table kept casting annoyed glances my way without ever quite looking at me. I wondered about this briefly and then ignored it.

Eventually, she came up to me and spoke thusly: "Excuse me, but your cell phone has been in my back this whole time. Are you going to be done using it soon?"

I blinked at her and eloquently replied: "... what now? My cell phone is doing what...?"

Upon which she decided that further conversation was useless, disgustedly snorted and shook her head, and sped to the counter to pay. She hastily collected her things and rushed out the door, never deigning to look at me again and leaving her tea half-drunk.

The waitress and I theorize that she was bothered by the radiation/bad cell phone vibes/whatnot coming off of my tablet. Incidentally, my tablet was on airplane mode, so it wasn't sending anything into her back. Also, the tea house has wifi (which I assume she was blissfully ignorant of). Also, good luck escaping cell phone radiation anywhere in this city...

Comments

[jo_lasalle]

OMG!

I find the radiation fear totally plausible after that story, but wow, I'm amazed that's still a thing and that the people freaking out about it manage to leave the house. O__o I think the last time I had someone freak out about cell phones in their vicinity was in, like, 2010...

"In my back"... LOL!

[rheasilvia]

When the entire city is full of wifi, cell phone towers and people both openly and concealed-carrying their devices, telling random people in your vicinity to cut it out isn't going to make any difference...

"In my back"...

It was confusing! :-) And I have never had anyone freak out about cell phones in real life before, not even back when they were new, rare and special. I honestly had no idea what she meant.

[jo_lasalle]

I confess in the moment when you weren't even using a phone, I probably wouldn't have got it either. "What do you mean? I didn't throw my phone at you..."

I lived for a while with some very Öko people, and had a sort-of-aunt who was easily panicked about her pacemaker, that's where I encountered this in the wild! But, ages ago. I think even that sort-of-aunt now has a mobile phone. *g*

[rheasilvia]

In the case of pacemakers, I can definitely understand some nervousness in the early days of the technology, considering that microwaves evidently can have a negative effect. So, yeah. But at this point, I think those fears have been disproved when it comes to cell phones - and I doubt this lady had a pacemaker! So I would have needed some lead-up, at least. ;-)

I've been wondering how I would have reacted had she bothered to explain, and I suppose she was right to storm off, because I would just have referred to the airplane mode (which she probably would not have understood) - and of course I had an actual cell phone in my bag.

The waitress said she's a regular (and is always odd). Let's hope she never finds out about the tea house's wifi hotspot. ;-)

[akk]

I admit reading "...concealed-carrying..." in context of mobile devices just made my day!
Thank you. :)))

[jo_lasalle]

YES! I forgot to mention this. *g*

[rheasilvia]

Heee! Glad to amuse. :-)