For the Love of God, Please Shut Up

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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?

STFU or you get tased!