Missoula Notebook

Your Very Own Copy of the Memo

By Sutton Stokes, 6-25-08

I tell people I work from home but of course that really means I work from coffee shops. The reason is that, when I’m working at home, it is for some reason impossible to ignore the laundry that needs doing, the shopping list that needs compiling, or — more realistically — the porch that needs sitting on or the YouTube videos of Animal/Buddy Rich drum battles that need watching. So, when deadlines loom, I often head out to one of my “branch offices.”

Usually I work in the Break*, where you may very well have seen me: I’m the white guy with the laptop, if that helps, although I must ask that you do not approach me, even if it looks like I’m just watching a Japanese game show on line. Like Dr. Duke, I can be “a very crude man” until after I’ve had my breakfast, and when you are dealing with a freelance writer whose wife is away for the summer and who is as a result untethered to a normal human schedule, you can never be sure if he’s just getting up or is on his way to bed.

You might not think it would be possible to get much thinky/writey work done in a coffee shop, but something about the low-grade hum of activity and the purposeful noises coming from the espresso machine actually seems to help me focus. Like most of the rest of the human race, however, I do find it difficult to block out a loud cell-phone conversation.

Those of you who own cell phones do realize this, right? When you are speaking into a cell phone in a normal tone of voice, everyone for at least 12 feet can hear every word you say. Not only that, but they’re listening, because they just can’t help it, and — if you’re saying something ridiculous or intimate or anything else that it’s strange to broadcast in a public place — they are mocking and judging you.

I used to long for an invention I could bring around with me, like the TV-B-Gone remote I carry on my keychain for self-defense against blaring televisions in public places. The invention would send out a field making it impossible for cell phones to work within 20 feet of me, although I suppose that non-interference with other devices is one of the few things the FCC actually cares about, other than swear words and nip slips.

Besides, such a device has finally begun to seem less and less necessary. As we edge into the second decade of relatively universal cell-phone use, more and more people seem to get it: cell-phone conversations are annoying and disruptive to overhear, and the only acceptable attitude when subjecting others to such conversations is chagrin and regret, preferably as you dash for the door mumbling “hold on, let me get outside here.”

We’ll never reach some people, of course, such as businessmen over-compensating for small penises and lonely people who actually want everyone else to listen. If I had to guess, the latter category is where I’d put the fellow I overheard ranting into his phone at a table near the front of the The Break on Sunday afternoon.

At the time, I was doing something fairly mindless, so I was able to just enjoy the man’s loud and frequent imprecations against “Barack Hussein Obama” (emphasis his) and the cabal of child molesters he believes to be directing national Democratic Party policy. A few years ago, someone with this man’s beliefs would have depressed me, but now that I know his head is probably going to explode this coming November 4th — no matter how sure he is that “Barack Hussein Obama” is “such a phony” and that “he’s going to be exposed” — I could just enjoy the show.

Two women at the next table over, however, apparently didn’t share my sangfroid.

“Excuse me,” said one of them, gently, leaning toward the man. “Could you please keep it down a little?”

He shot her a confused glance, then looked at her open laptop.

“No,” he snapped. “It’s a coffee shop, you know.”

I suppose the Obama-hating ranter assumed that this woman was requesting library-like silence so she could work undisturbed, but I doubt that this was actually what she wanted. Like me, I’m sure she anticipated a certain level of noise when she decided to settle down to work in a coffee shop.

It’s just that — like me, like increasing numbers of everyone — she also probably just assumed that the days of loud cell-phone conversations in restaurants and coffee shops have pretty much gone the way of firing up a stogey in the same settings.

This guy hadn’t gotten the memo, though. And he didn’t sound like someone you’d want to start arguing with. Finding that the next phase of my work required a little more concentration than his ranting would permit, I silently gathered up my things and moved to a table in the back.

It was either move or sit there and stew, and I’m thinking more and more these days that stewing is for the weak.
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* Disclosure: While I think New West has some sort of advertising or other commercial relationship with the Break, not to mention the inordinate amount of Break coffee the editors are always sucking down whenever I drop by the office with a tire iron to see why my check was late again, I’m really not writing this to encourage your patronage at the Break. Frankly, I don’t need any more competition for tables near electrical outlets, plus the pumpkin gingerbread muffins disappear fast enough as it is.

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