I popped in to my neighborhood Peet’s this afternoon for a coffee break. While reading a magazine, I watched with bemusement as a woman sat down at the table next to me, placed her cellphone on the table and began to converse with an invisible friend using a bluetooth headset.
Putting aside my ambivalent feelings about the social propriety of the increasingly common sight of presumably sane people sitting in cafés or walking down streets engrossed in conversation with absent companions, I watched as the woman finished her coffee (but not her conversation) and then stood up and left the building.
A moment later, I noticed she had left her cellphone on the table but was so absorbed in her conversation that she hadn’t thought to bring her phone with her. About thirty seconds later, she walked back into Peet’s (still on the phone — nice range on that headset), picked up her forgotten cellphone from the table, told her invisible friend she had almost abandoned her phone and then walked back out of Peet’s. Perhaps Bluetooth is leading to increased cellphone loss?
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