Muni Diaries

In Japan, the Kanto Railway enforces that cell phones be on silent mode. Photo by Flickr user Nemo’s Great Uncle

I was riding the F line several months ago during the morning rush hour toward downtown. A teenage girl boarded somewhere around 8th or 10th Street, and her cell phone began playing some sort of ring tone at a very high volume. The driver told her that she needed to silence the phone, to which she explained, “I’m getting a text message.” When the phone continued to play, the driver stopped the car at the next stop and told her that she needed to either silence the phone or get off and that he was not moving the car until she did one or the other.

She again explained, “I’m getting a text message.” The explanation, of course, made no sense to anyone on the car. Silencing the ringer doesn’t prevent a text message from being received, and by this point, the phone had been playing the same ringtone for nearly five minutes. So the car didn’t move, she didn’t get off, and the other passengers, now becoming late for work, grew restless. Shouts began to erupt from the back of the train to “Turn the phone off!” Soon, the whole car had joined in the shouting, and the girl, instead of turning the phone off, kept shouting back that they should shut up because she was getting a text message. A riot felt imminent.

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