Our bad phone manners…
I just left a VIP lounge of one local airport very angry. I decided to use the lounge and pay the fee in this hard times instead of using the general lounge, which is free. Why did I do that?
I wanted to have some quiet time, sleep small before boarding the plane. It was an early morning flight but was delayed for three hours. Since I woke up by 3am to meet up, I was feeling tired and sleepy.
So, I decided to use the lounge. I wanted the quietude to enable me sleep and feel rested. Unfortunately, that was not to be.
In one corner was this trader. How did I know he was a trader and not a businessman? Before I answer that, let me tell you there’s much difference between a trader and a businessman. I am a businessman. The man is a trader. How?
His manner of dressing; he had gold chain hanging from his neck to his navel; he dressed like American gangster rappers. He drank three cups of tea. And he made so much noise on his phone.
Without knowing who he was, from his phone calls, you’d know ‘he has money’, he has many cars, and he is building a new house. He let me know all these from his telephone conversations.
He told the man roofing his new house the type of roof sheets to use. He told his driver to go and collect his clothes from the Drycleaner using “the Jeep”. You know many Nigerians do not know that Jeep is a car brand and belongs to the family of Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs). So, they call Toyota Landcruiser, Honda Pilot, etc, Jeep.
He turned to the wife and asked her to use the “other Jeep” when going to make her hair. He called his apprentices and asked them to update him on the money they collected last night, as if he wasn’t coming from his house. He shouted on one for collecting N2m instead of the N2.5m he asked him to collect.
He made so much noise that I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rest, wasted my hardearned N3,000 paying to sleep.
You see, many of us have no discipline when it comes to telephone conversations. Whether it is inside a plane or in public places, we want to show off and annoyingly speak on top of our voices. We don’t care who is listening; in short, we want them to hear us and ‘respect us.’
Unfortunately, you can’t earn the respect of responsible people by shouting on your phone. Instead, you earn their scorn and disrespect. You are seen as ‘money miss road’; a trader who has no discipline; a village person; an unexposed person.
If you must answer your call in public, lower your voice or step out at an open place where the open air will drown your voice, take it and add it to the shouts of people of your kind.
This bush man continued with his bad phone manners after we boarded. He called his driver, his cook, his security man, and perhaps his side chick. The head purser had to beg him to switch off his phone after the cabin door had been shut. He reluctantly did. I guess by then he was satisfied that he had told us who he was.
Who was he? A bush man. A villager. Undisciplined person. You need to see how people were looking at him with nothing short of disdain.
If you’re guilty of this habit, change. You don’t impress anyone. You only make a fool of yourself. I mean, everybody in that plane paid for their tickets. Even if some had theirs paid by someone else, at least they, too, know rich men who could afford to buy tickets for them.
