Category: Modern problems

We’ve all seen them.

People wandering around having conversations on speaker phone assaulting everyone around them with both sides of the call. The person you can see screaming into the little device and the person you can’t see blaring their responses in a overly loud tinny little voice back. Then the offensive person gives you a dirty look and cranks the volume even higher when you raise your voice to place your coffee order. As if you’re the one being rude because you’re interfering with their conversation.

One of these days Alice… Pow! Zoom! Right to the Moon!

Or I’ll just slap the phone out of their hand and stomp it into the ground. Probably to applause from everyone else!

That’s annoying as hell in a public setting & oddly seems to be something that happens a lot on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic spectrum. Although my next door neighbor likes to sit on her patio having similar conversations. In her defense, I think she’s actually doing other things and is legitimately using the hands free speaker phone option because she’s got her hands full.

But there’s another class of folks that can be just as annoying.

They’re the people you sleep with every night, or the people that you may sleep with occasionally.

These folks don’t seem to understand that there’s a nifty little function called do not disturb on their phone. They also don’t seem to understand that some of us can’t sleep with their phones lighting up every 5 minutes. After all who can sleep with a disco ball flashing in their bedroom?

I’m one of those people that often has a hard time sleeping.

As long as it’s dark, and quiet I can stay asleep, but any state change in the local environment will wake me up. The refrigerator changing it’s normal rhythm is often enough to wake me. The power going off in the middle of the night will wake me because of the sudden silence. Even things like the A/C or heater switching on at more irregular intervals than “normal” will wake me.

So you can imagine what it’s like for me if there’s someone obsessively checking their phone for a message or reading new emails. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve got great night vision and can see well in nothing more than starlight.

It’s because of this that I am appreciative of DND and more so of the “Bedtime” settings on my phone. After about 10:30 my phone goes into DND automatically. By 11:00 my phone is in bedtime mode (so is my nifty watch). This means that no lights, whistles, or bells are flashing through the night. Unless you’re on a very short list of people, you’re not going to be able to reach me until morning, after all that’s why God made voice mail! Hell, my phone doesn’t come out of DND until after 7:30 am. I prefer to have my morning coffee in peace, thank you very much!

I hit the DND button at dinner, before a Doctors appointment, during meetings, massages, or even drinks with friends (back when we actually had dinners or drinks with friends).

Now imagine me laying in bed asleep with a person next to me who refuses to activate these features.

The light from the phone penetrates my eyelids, and I’m awake. I open my eyes to see if there’s something going on. Nope, their phone is sitting on the nightstand but illuminating the walls & ceiling. Okay, I close my eyes again and go back to sleep.

This cycle is repeated 20 or 30 times (due to notifications, email, occasional text messages, etc.) each night. Add in almost incessant snoring, mumbling in their sleep, trips to the bathroom, and it shouldn’t be any wonder that I generally liked living alone in a tiny little apartment. Even though some of the neighbors were completely out of their damn minds and their personal issues sometimes robbed me of a decent night’s sleep.

As an aside, since moving back to my house I’ve lost about three hours of solid deep sleep a night. It’s not uncommon for me to be sleeping on the couch or floor in another room.

However there’s another factor in this that you may not have considered. Those times when the other person is actively checking their mail, messages, or notifications. They’ll be laying there reading things, and because the phone is like a damn searchlight in my face I’m awake and reading their phone too.

Then I get in trouble because I know stuff that I wasn’t supposed to know. I get accused of going through their private messages. I don’t… That would imply that I care. Nope, I’m just reading what’s on their display over their shoulder because they’ve woke me.

I guess there are those who might think I should politely not read the information but here’s the thing. You know that I’m going to wake up, if you really wanted privacy, you’d get up and go elsewhere to read rather than shining it in my face.

All this is to say; use the features on your phone!

On the iPhone just open the conveniently located control center and tap the little half moon. That will turn on “Do Not Disturb”. If you’re using a later version of iPhone that has the bedtime reminders, set it up. You can even schedule automatic DND between certain hours.  Another helpful thing that used to work, is that just putting your iPhone face down would silence it and even if it doesn’t completely silence it, at least the phone won’t be lighting up the whole room.

I can tell you, it will be appreciated by your other half or just your guest for the night…