Shut up and Eat, Lady!

By CHARLES FERRUZZA

There are so many reasons I hate people who talk on cell phones in restaurants that I don’t even know where I’d start. But a pox on the really freakish diners who don’t give a rat’s ass about the customers sitting around them as they discuss, loudly, very personal details about their lives and the lives of family members. Take, for example, the woman I recently overheard at a Mexican restaurant in a northern suburb of Kansas City, practically screaming into her phone.

“Well, I’m worried about him. He’s already had three teeth pulled and now they need to remove a cyst from his back. From his back! I don’t know what’s wrong with the teeth. The gums were infected. Infected!”

She took a momentary break from her phone conversation to order a cocktail from the waiter. A margarita. Then she was back to the clinical details: “We think he might have the symptoms of some other diseases. Can I tell you some of the symptoms? Well, there’s that cyst, of course….”

Now that smoking has been banned from most restaurants and bars in the metro, can cell phones please be next?