Common courtesy is not so common anymore

One of my major pet peeves is when people I'm talking with would send text messages on their cellphone in the middle of our conversation. It's simply rude. It's indirectly having someone else interrupt the conversation. Imagine talking earnestly to somebody and after a cellphone beeps, you find yourself talking to a bent head. A lot of the people I know are guilty of this impoliteness.

Many times I wanted to bring this discourtesy to the guilty person's attention, but I simply don't know how to do it without hurting their feelings. (Sadly, I'm one of those people who would rather suffer in silence just to avoid tension. It's a flaw, I know, and I'm working on it.) I have to actually pinch myself from saying something after the person I was talking with interrupted our conversation to take a call or read a text message.

With Philippines tagged as the texting capital of the world (Filipinos send an average of 200 million text messages daily) mobile phones have only made an already generally rude Pinoy society even ruder. Why do I say that? Just go to any movie house in the Philippines and you will "hear" what I mean. Inside, you can hear a smattering of beeps and rings, and worse, nobody minds anymore! Not to mention during private functions, such as meetings. In all the meetings I attend, everyone is free to tinker with their phones while the meeting is going on. I have yet to attend a meeting where everyone is reminded to either turn off or put on silent mode their phones. Then there are the weddings, funerals, worship services, etc...

I remember back in college, when cellphones were still a new invention, one of my teachers actually answered his phone in the middle of a class lecture. Seriously. He didn't even say 'excuse me' and turn around, which would have been the proper thing to do if he really had to answer his phone. He just fished his phone out of his pocket and answered it right then and there. Geez.

A lot of people seems to think that common courtesy doesn't apply to how one uses the cellphone. Come to think of it, common courtesy is not so common anymore, whether it's cellphone-related or not.