Dear Editor,
There is a pervasive and irritating habit which really gets one’s prickle. I’m speaking about the uncouth and dumb manner of some grown adults, but more so our young people when using phone devices. This relates to the way they make and respond to calls on both cellphones and landlines.
The opening of the floodgates of modern-day technology has propelled us, like other nations, to an advanced stage of mass communication. We are not lagging in exploiting the endless advantages that are available. Unfortunately, the quantum leap in this realm of electronic technology has not in any way contributed to a finer quality of behaviour. Who would want to deny that this age of superior technology, worldwide web information and the ubiquitous range of touchscreen gadgets have not brought along some of the most depraved and repulsive things. Yes, we have been derailed more than we would want to imagine with ten steps forward and multiple times that number backwards. Like the youngster said, “Instead of advancing we devance” ‒ nicely put.
Now, what can be more annoying on almost a daily basis to encounter experiences like these: Your phone at home rings, and you pick up and answer, “Hello, good morning/good afternoon, or as is common these days with Christian folks, “Bless the Lord, good day.” The response then comes through: “Jackie home?”; “Ah waan Simone”; “Who is this?”; “Is who ah talking to?”; “Ah want talk to Abby”; “You wasn’t fuh call me”; “Whey yuh mudda deh, call she.” Or conversely you put through a call, again on the landline, and in the background there is terribly loud music and you are having difficulty communicating. You are at your wits’ end hoping that the person will do the sensible thing, but no way, the person at that end just keeps on shouting foolishly: “Is wha yuh want?”; “Is who yuh really want?”; “Is who ah talking to?” They can hardly hear you and you in turn are being tortured by loud, lewd, cussing music in the background.
And don’t make the mistake of trying to reprimand them, then you get exactly what you were looking for. And sometimes all of this goes on even when parents/elders are at home. Don’t we teach children to be polite and respectful anymore? But understand too that this conduct applies to business places as well; some hardly have time to answer your queries and are eager to dismiss you, while you can hear in the background the ‘gaff’ going on, and if you are forced to follow up you become a nuisance. Yes! This is how we are; internet, facebook, instagram, you-tube, google, whatsapp, rat-trap, twitter, hitter and thither – lost! Has modern-day fast moving high-tech really made us any better in terms of quality? Seems to me that with every improvement comes a corresponding ‘deprovement’.
Maybe we should seek the services of Joyce Jones and Joyce St Clair to restart a programme on ‘bad manners’. Put on phones some tips which nicely instruct how to be courteous every time the phone is picked up, and hope against hope that it helps, at least in some small way. Some will argue that these ‘magical’ gadgets weren’t made to lift morals and I concede; still, don’t we as a society require a modicum of good manners, some semblance of decency?
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe