Hasta La Ideas

All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!

Imagine for a moment you’re at a hospital cafeteria having lunch with a friend you haven’t seen in years. This friend is a doctor and currently on call. Your doctor friend sits down at the table with you and asks if she can leave her cell phone on the table, in case an emergency arises and she has to run upstairs to save a patient’s life. You say, “that’s cool,” and don’t mind at all because this friend is responsible for the survival of humans, is on call, you’re at her workplace, and your friend asked you if it was okay.

Now, imagine a second scenario where you are out at dinner with your friends. All of your friends have kids and those kids are currently being supervised by babysitters. You don’t see your friends’ phones, but you’re pretty sure they have them in their pockets with their call notifications set to vibrate. At some point, a friend excuses herself from the table to go to the restroom. You don’t know it, but her phone vibrated in her pocket and so she went to the bathroom to make sure the incoming call from the babysitter wasn’t some kind of emergency. The call wasn’t an emergency, so your friend quickly answered the babysitter’s question, washed her hands, returned to the table, and stuck her phone back in her pocket.

Okay, imagine a third situation where you are alone in your apartment and not doing anything extremely important. Your phone rings, you want to talk to the person on the other end, and you answer the call.

The above scenarios are examples of polite phone etiquette. The example of the doctor shows the rare situation where a cell phone is appropriate to leave out on a table during a meal. The second scenario shows how a phone’s vibrate function silently alerts people they are receiving a call. The third situation explains how a phone’s ringer works and what you do when you have an incoming call you want to answer.

The above scenarios also explain why no one has a need for a call notification Trellie charm for a handbag, necklace, or keychain:

Unless your phone doesn’t ring or vibrate, the Trellie doesn’t do anything your phone doesn’t already do except for deplete your battery power quickly because it operates via Bluetooth. Also, since it flashes a light when you get a call, it alerts everyone near you that you’re getting a phone call, which is just as inconsiderate as your phone ringing in a silent movie theater.

What is so difficult about setting a phone to vibrate and discretely checking it when it vibrates? Nothing is difficult about that. Nothing at all.

I remember a time before cell phones when people could go for hours without knowing if they got a non-emergency phone call — and people SURVIVED! True story.

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