Rejoice! Man Takes Revenge on Loud and Obnoxious Traveler Talking on a Mobile Phone!
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 01.25.06 | 1:02 AM ET
Short of the criminal act of grabbing someone’s mobile phone and hurling it across Concourse C, this just might be the best way that we’ve ever heard of to get revenge on an insufferable phone user. It comes from Jane L. Levere’s story in today’s New York Times about the rise in rude behavior among travelers.
Hard stares or pleas for silence rarely work, so Jonathan Yarmis, a senior vice president of Hill & Knowlton in New York, opted for the next-best course: sweet revenge.
On a trip to Seattle last year, Mr. Yarmis and others at the United Red Carpet Club at LaGuardia Airport were forced to listen to a young man en route to Nashville who was “on his phone talking to everyone he knew,” he recalled. “It sounded like he was on his first business trip. I and others asked him to tone it down or move elsewhere, but he didn’t acknowledge us.”
Noting the man’s phone number-which he repeated on voice messages he left-Mr. Yarmis called him from Seattle at midnight, or 2 a.m. Nashville time.
“I said, ‘You must think it’s pretty rude getting a phone call at 2 a.m.’ ” Mr. Yarmis said. “He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said. ‘It’s certainly less rude than the behavior you exhibited in the Red Carpet Club this afternoon.’ We both hung up. Maybe I made a point to him.”