Are we seeing generation of mobile phone idiots?

MOBILE phone rudeness has moved up the league of public annoyance, sparked off with the Sainsbury’s checkout operator refusing to serve an annoying, inconsiderate customer.

My best experience of this was last year when I was inviting tenders for resurfacing my driveway with resin-bonded gravel. The sales manager from a company in South Yorkshire arrived and rang my doorbell. I greeted him and we shook hands as I stepped out onto my drive.

Within 15 seconds, his phone rang and he muttered “blinking mobile-phone” and raised his eyes in a vexed expression – then turned his back on me and walked back to his car and spent three or four minutes pacing back and forth around his car while talking on his phone.

No apology or any “excuse me”, and this from a sales manager. He didn’t get the job of course.

In his column Neil McNicholas (Yorkshire Post, July 13) hit most of today’s gripes about the mobile phone.

What puzzles me is that 20-25 years ago, if I was waiting to use a GPO phone-box and I opened 
the door to listen to the conversation of the occupant, I would have been ticked off and maybe punched or even handbagged. Today they talk (or shout) without caring who hears them nearby.

It’s quite rare today to see a young female that isn’t looking at, or talking to, or listening to, or prodding/swiping the mobile-phone. It seems that this device has gained supremacy over all other items and normal human functions in today’s society. Will the human species slowly evolve with one arm eventually attached to one ear?

Albert Einstein said: “I fear the day when technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” How right.