Gothamist/iPhone Ringtone Brings New York Philharmonic To A Dead Stop

[markpkessinger]

10. Don't know if they still do this at Lincoln Center, but ...

...back in the mid-Jurassic, pre-cell phone era, when people, if they carried anything at all, carried pagers, the policy at all the Lincoln Center theaters was to request, in most cases, that people not even bring them to the theater. In the cases of doctors, clergypersons or others for whom it was necessary to be constantly reachable, they were asked to leave their pagers with the box office, and the box office would then come and quietly retrieve the person in the event his or her pager went off. I see no reason why they shouldn't do the same with cell phones.

For most of us, I think, the "what if there were an emergency" bit gets seriously overplayed. I mean, seriously, you'd wonder how humanity ever survived without a damn cell phone. More people should discover anew the joys of "unplugging" for a few hours!