Andrew Yarnwood wrote:
I have a proposal for dealing with (punishing) people who make loud
business phone calls on trains (or any other public transport). ("I'm
on the train ... buy! ... sell!")

Record the calls or make some note, especially if there's anything
that sounds confidential, and publish transcripts or summaries on the
web or a newsgroup.

One particularly obnoxious person managed to get me to react. Only one
so far.

This person had been conducting some business for some time (they had
some very borderline case for something or other, and definately
wouldn't take no for an answer, and it sounded vaguely like there was
some kind of fraudulent claim or application going on), and the whole
carriage was getting rather tired of it. I'd couldn't even get away from
it by listening to some music - the person's voice was that piercing.

Anyway, some poor old lady decided to ask the woman politely to stop.
The woman completely ignored her, and continued her debating via the
phone. She didn't even acknowledge that the old lady was trying to
communicate with her. It got to the point where the old lady tapped her
on the shoulder, just to get some kind of acknowledgement that she was
there - at which point, the woman on the phone accused her of assault.
The old lady tried valiantly to argue her corner, but when she wasn't
physically in contact with the woman, she was ignored, and when she was,
she was accused of assault. So eventually she gave up.

The rules of this game appear to be: be as annoying as possible to the
woman, but without any physical contact. I can work with that :¬)

An ordinary walkman in-ear style earpiece, dangled within 1-2cm of the
phone mic seemed to work quite well. Small, easy to maneuver, easy to
place accurately. No danger of actual contact. She tried to stonewall me
too - but this was to my advantage, not hers, as I'm sure the other
person had no idea what she was saying. I was quite content to listen to
the song. The challenge is to pick something with a strong riff, some
memorable changes, and not something that can be easily filtered out -
i.e. not just typical clubbers' noise.

For added effect, the other earpiece can be dangled next to the free
ear, so she can't clearly hear what the other person is saying either.

Five minutes, and she was off the phone. Never said a word to me. The
old lady did though, she was most thankful :¬)

James Moody
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