I am opposed to the death penalty.  However, in circumstances like this, it might be appropriate.

Well, I realize that cellphone offenders are one of the last candidates for public stoning, but we are all guilty.

During Lent, our church has a service of reconcilation that ends with 5 or 6 priests stationed around the santuary to hear private confessions.  It draws a big crowd and for a lot of people, it’s the only time they go.  Our pastor introduced each priest by name and made a little friendly comment about each.  Then he stressed how this was a very serious time when people may be discussing the most important issues in their lives and he asked everyone to please double check to make sure their cell phones were off.  As if on cue, ten seconds later a cell phone went off - it was one of the priests.  At least he wasn’t hearing confession when it happened.

This is a bizarre story, though, for the fact that apparently the offender let the phone ring on and on.  Since they normally go to voice messaging after 4-5 rings I’m not even sure how that could happen.

I cannot understand why people need to take any PDA/phone/computer etc. into a concert unless they are a heart surgeon awaiting the arrival of a heart by helicopter. I am a person who has to be in constant touch, but not at concerts, movies, restaurants or church. Not much can beat the time when someone in our congregation answered a call and started chatting during the Great Thanksgiving. I guess this one is at least as bad.

Mr. Gilbert said ... he had heard that the orchestra’s customer relations department was planning to call him to ask why he didn’t act sooner.

I hope they don’t call him during a concert or a church service…

Just another example of society’s near complete abandonment of even the most common courtesies.  Etiquette seems to have become somehow associated with snobbery to the point where people are embarrassed to put on a collared shirt or (God forbid!) a jacket and tie when dining out in a nice restaurant. As for this particular offense it reminds me of a photograph I once saw of a sign on the door to a church in Russia.  It was in Cyrillic but translated it said…

“Failure to turn off cell phone = 500 prostrations.”

When an Orthodox bishop prepares for celebrating the Liturgy, there is (sometimes) an elaborate ritual of putting him in layers of vestments.  But you know where this is going…

Well, since it continued to ring, it could be that the patient had a medical problem - dizziness, tia, chest pain, partial complex seizure, narcolepsy.  He was a regular subscriber, and should have noticed. 

Still, cell phones are annoying and the ushers should have done something about this, if only (again) to check and make sure that the patient was okay. 

One also kind of wonders why the person next to him didn’t tap him on the shoulder and say, “Excuse me, Sir. Are you okay?  Your cell phone is going off, and I thought you should know.”  It is not as though folks in the orchestra seats are likely to be sitting all by themselves . . .

Might be time to update I’ve Got a Little List. We could add ‘people who comment on threads on blogs’ to ‘the man who doesn’t switch of his iPhone in a concert’. That would be Gilbert’s style after all - leave no low hanging fruit unpicked. :D

I agree with all the above comments about a lack of etiquette in public (well, perhaps not the capital punishment ones) but there is another side to this. Some of our older folks are either talked into buying or gifted these complicated devices that have the bells and whistles which they quite frankly can’t hear (or don’t know how to turn off). Perhaps that, and not only money, explains why the perp was in the first row!

Well I attended Turandot a few weeks ago at the San Francisco Opera, and a middle-aged woman behind me chose the opening moments of Nessun Dorma to open a cough drop with the crinkliest wrapping paper imaginable. This was followed by what must have been an equally annoying sound to everyone sitting around us, the audible sigh that I reflexively let out in disgust.  The SF Symphony helpfully tells its new patrons “Please unwrap your cough drops before the performance begins. Thank you.”  A few days later at Carmen I had the misfortune to sit near a young lady who had chosen to come to the opera wearing a jingly decorative bracelet, which reminded me, over the course of the evening, of Rosalind Russell and the “Lady Iris” scene in Auntie Mame. I’ve also noticed a general increase in talking (“What’s going on?” “What did she just say?” “Why does he want to kill her?” “Zuni is overprice, we’re never going there again!” “I’ll be the Met is better than this.” “Why don’t you sing to me like that?”). But I swear, cough drops are the worst.

Sharia law would call for removing the thumbs of the offenders.