I’m really not that nosy.
I’m usually pretty happy to keep to myself and to mind my own
business. That is until I’m invited into
someone else's conversation, by virtue of the fact that they’re having it right
in front of me. I was sitting in the
airport lounge today, minding my own business, as I do, when my ears were assaulted by the unwelcome sound of a loud-talker. As I’ve mentioned many times, when I'm at the airport,
I hole up in the business centre in the lounge because it’s typically the
quietest place in the entire airport. That
is, until a loud talker descends and breaks the sound barrier.
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| I enjoy the solitude and serenity of the lounge: No loud talkers allowed |
Today’s loud talker was not just loud, but mobile. He didn’t just sit and bug the people in his
general vicinity, he moved around the lounge screaming into this cell phone,
generally annoying everyone. When I
first encountered him, he was giving directions on how to retrieve baggage from
a luggage carousel. I’m not sure if he
was talking to somebody in the same airport, or a different one, but he was
pretty condescending. Let’s face
it…anybody who has watched TV, or been to the movies knows how a luggage
carousel works. Arguably, I could only
hear one side of the conversation, and I have no idea what was going on at the
other end, but if it were me, his tone and choice of words would have earned
him a hang up.
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| It ain't that difficult a concept |
I moved to get away from him. I found a little cubicle where I could quietly
enjoy my Baileys with ice, and my cookie, when at once, my ears were again assaulted. Same dude.
He sat right down on the other side of the partition, and I guess he
thought he was alone, because he had lowered his voice, as to whisper, but
buddy’s whisper carried the same decibel level as the average guy’s normal
speaking volume. I was about to relocate
with my Baileys and cookie, when his conversation grabbed my attention. As I said, I’m generally not nosy, but when
you hear, “…so you’ve got your luggage now?
Well you’ve got to get rid of that stuff cuz you’re gonna get
searched.” Alrighty…now I’m hooked.
He went on to instruct his friend/dealer/mule on how to find
a place to open their suitcase before they approached the customs agent. “Find somewhere away from everybody, make
sure nobody’s watching, and throw that stuff away.” I dunno if he got tipped off that his friend
was going to get searched, or he was just worried, but he was absolutely firm
that the hidden contraband had to be ditched.
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| They'll find it...wherever you hide it |
I continued to listen intently, my mind racing as it
wondered what kind of illegal stuff this dude was importing. He dropped his volume again, and actually
stopped speaking altogether when somebody else walked by, then when he thought
he was in the clear, he spilled it…”you absolutely have to get rid of those
oranges and any other fruit from your luggage, they won’t let them into the
country.” Note to self: In the future, mind my own business. Oranges.
Hmmph.
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| Our society is being destroyed by the illegal importation of citrus fruits |
I don’t know why some people think the airport business
centre is the place to do a skype call with no headset. It’s bad enough when you have to hear one
side of the conversation, but when you’re hearing both sides, it really crosses
the line. I was sitting beside a guy one
day, who decided to fire up skype and get on the line with the company
lawyer. In the airport. In a crowded business centre.
He was, with reckless abandon, talking about an employee who
had committed various offenses of the company expense policy and code of
ethics. One by one, he ran through
“Dave’s” list of no-no’s including huge personal cell phone bills, padding his
mileage, and questionable processes for having his expenses approved. Now I didn’t know this guy, or Dave. But I could have.
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| If you're gonna skype in public, get a freakin headset |
It doesn’t happen often, but I occasionally run into current
and former colleagues, customers, and prospects in the airport. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility
to stick my head up and look over the cubicle wall in the business centre and
find somebody I know sitting on the other side.
That’s why I tend to keep it cool and not discuss business in a place
where I shouldn’t. Same thing on
planes…no open computer with the company’s financials, no emails. Nothing.
I don’t know how people forget that they’re not walking around inside
the cone of silence.
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| Like Maxwell Smart...Get a Cone of Silence |
Clearly this never occurred to buddy, as he named the
company a couple of times, he named Dave, although didn’t give his last name,
and talked about where the company is located and gave a bunch of details about
the nature of Dave’s job. I can only
assume, or hope, that the company lawyer couldn’t tell that buddy was in an
open space having this kind of conversation.
If I knew the company, or Dave, I would have been in possession of the
fact that ole Dave was going to shortly be on the receiving end of a big boot
in his ass. So not cool.
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| Because of a loud talker, the whole airport knew Dave's fate before he did. |
Inadvertent loud talking is one thing, and it’s annoying,
for sure, but worse are the loud talkers who do it on purpose. I’m
talking about those people, who in restaurants, say snide and catty things
about the server to other people, but loud enough so that the server and the
rest of the restaurant can hear them. My
mother is the queen of the ‘snide-grenade’…tossing them all over the place, but
never voicing her dissatisfaction directly.
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| Wreaking havoc with a snide-grenade |
I was standing in the airport (where else?) one day, and
there was some nasty weather, so flights were getting stacked up, and as usual,
tensions were running a little high.
This woman, standing behind me on line, was getting more and more
furious every time the airline updated the departure time of our flight. At one point, on her cell phone, she started
ranting in as loud a voice as she could, about the ‘stupid bitches’ at the
airline, and how they didn’t care about her connection to St. Johns out of
Montreal, and how the plane was just sitting there and they were purposely
delaying boarding just to see how many people they could inconvenience. Now, I know that the Air Canada people take a
lot of flak for their lackluster customer service, but I can’t imagine even one
of them coming to work with the idea to purposely delay a whole flight of
passengers.
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My faith was restored when two other passengers, not related
to each other at all, approached her from two separate directions and kindly
told her to STFU. If you don’t know what
STFU means, you clearly don’t text enough.
Click here to find the meaning. http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/stfu
This woman, did actually tone it down after she was chided
by her fellow passengers, at least until she was able to board the plane. I was seated first, and when she walked by
me, down the aisle to her seat, she was again ranting into her phone about
delays and stupid Air Canada. Finally,
she either shut up, or was told again to shut up, because I could no longer hear
her from my seat. The pilot began to
taxi the plane toward the runway, when we stopped, just short of our take-off
location. Instead checking for incoming
traffic, then carrying on to the runway, the pilot’s voice came over the
intercom.
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| He's the captain. He knows what he's doing. Unless he doesn't. |
“Well ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got a little computer
problem up here in the cockpit, and we need to take a few minutes to reboot the
onboard computers before we’re cleared to go.
It’ll just be about 10 minutes…” I was about 50% amused, and about 95%
scared that we were about to hurtle into the sky in a contraption that moments
ago had experienced an issue that was fixed by a simple CTL-ALT-DEL, when from
a few rows back, I heard the nasty loud talking lady who thought that Air
Canada was conspiring against her scream, at the top of her lungs, “ARE YOU F*CKING
KIDDING ME?” Where’s the air marshal and
his taser when you need him?
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| STFU or you get tased! |
