Can you hear me now? Unfortunately, yes.

Ok, people. Emily Post called, and she used language that would make a grown man blush. She wanted to know what happened to basic manners. Have we become so engrossed in our phones, our notifications, and whatever fresh nonsense the internet is serving us that we’ve forgotten how to function among actual human beings? At some point, common courtesy apparently became an elective, and judging by what I’m seeing out there, a disturbing number of people dropped the class.

I was getting a massage because my daughter told me I needed to stop working so much and take some “me-time,” which apparently is what we’re calling lying perfectly still while mentally reorganizing your entire life. I was finally starting to relax when a man in the hallway started chatting, loudly, on his phone.

Now, every self-help book currently squatting on Amazon’s bestseller list says, “Let them talk on the phone!” and “You can only control your response to someone’s behavior, not their actions,” and blah, blah, blah, inner peace, boundaries, personal growth. Conceptually, I understand this. Spiritually, I was one muffled speakerphone conversation away from stomping into the hallway and providing some very direct feedback.

Fortunately, I remembered that I was skyclad at the time, which would have turned a mildly irritating afternoon into an arrest and a phone call of my own. Mine, at least, would have been necessary.

At what point did we collectively decide that everyone else in the room simply ceased to exist?

I get it. We live in a different world now. People can work from wherever there’s cell service, offices have become increasingly optional, and apparently, as the world gets smaller, our conversations have gotten louder. There seems to be an overwhelming need to share every moment of our lives, not only on social media, but also on speakerphone with everyone within a 30-foot radius.

Because who among us asked to become an unwilling participant in a complete stranger’s phone call? Oh, that’s right, no one. I also don’t need to know why your sister is mad at you, what your dermatologist said about that thing on your back, or why Brenda from accounting is “literally impossible to work with.” Granted, if there’s a secret second family, a neighborhood scandal involving a Ring camera, or an embezzlement scheme, speak up. I’m not unreasonable. But it never is. It’s usually an exhaustive forensic reconstruction of an interaction the person telling the story didn’t even enjoy, and now everyone within earshot is being forced to experience it retroactively.

Back at the spa, the man continues his loud conversation. He’s hard of hearing, and judging by his wife’s responses blasting through the speakerphone, so is she, which means I get the added benefit of hearing both sides of the conversation several times.

She wants to know what he wants for dinner.

The answer is hot dogs.

This should have been a two-word exchange.

It was not.

What she thinks he says isn’t even in the hot dog food group. What follows is several increasingly louder attempts to communicate two of the simplest words in the English language.

“HOT DOGS.”

“WHAT?”

“HOT. DOGS.”

Her next guess is still wildly incorrect.

This riveting culinary summit apparently couldn’t wait until, I don’t know, he was outside and no longer in the middle of a spa where people had paid actual money to relax. By the time the Great Hot Dog Negotiations reached an apparent stalemate, I was emotionally invested in whether this poor woman would ever understand that the man wanted hot dogs and, thanks to the prolonged culinary hostage situation, wondering what I was going to have for dinner.

Spoiler alert: not hot dogs.

He finally leaves, and I can feel my body beginning to crawl out of fight-or-flight mode. My shoulders drop. My jaw unclenches. Inner peace is once again within striking distance.

Until, and I kid you not, a different man starts talking on his phone.

In Spanish.

Now, as a Spanish teacher, I am professionally incapable of not eavesdropping on a conversation in Spanish. I don’t want to listen. I have to listen. My reward? A one-sided discussion about where something is located.

I’m hoping it was the Hope Diamond or the cure for cancer, given the amount of “No, not that drawer. The one to the left. A la izquierda. No. The other left.”
Apparently, we had exhausted the traditional concept of izquierda and moved on to una izquierda diferente. By this point, I wasn’t getting a massage. I was trapped in the world’s most expensive bilingual scavenger hunt.

Maybe all those self-help books are right. Maybe I can’t control other people’s behavior. I can only control my response to it. I can breathe deeply. I can practice acceptance. I can protect my peace.

Or, and hear me out, we could also make a tiny effort not to destroy everyone else’s.

We could remember that public spaces are shared spaces. We could respect the peace of the people around us. We could resurrect the radical notion that just because you can do something in public doesn’t necessarily mean you should.

And, for the love of Emily Post, we could all just stop talking on speakerphone in public.

I hope that poor woman eventually figured out he wanted hot dogs. And that somewhere, someone finally located una izquierda diferente.

Tracy Winslow is the owner of Low Country Shrimp and Knits and One More Row Coffee Co. She is also a Spanish professor at Montclair State University, where she insists her students wear headphones during Zoom classes because the general public has suffered enough without being forced to learn the difference between the preterite and imperfect. If you need somewhere to escape the chaos, speakerphone conversations are not allowed at Shrimp and Knits. Come grab some yarn, order a nice cup of tea, and protect your peace. We’ll do our best not to destroy it. shrimpandknits.com