The Jerk with the Cell Phone: A Survival Guide for the Rest of Us

Cell phones, those ubiquitous pieces of pocket technology, are unquestionably useful--but they can also be undeniably annoying. Who hasn't, after all, seen a diner ignoring her date for her cell phone chat, suffered through a ringing phone during a movie or otherwise witnessed an act of bad cell phone etiquette? The titular cell phone jerks may not be ""multiplying faster than a rabbit on Viagra,"" as the authors of this little volume would suggest, but there are plenty of them. And Pachter and Magee, who previously teamed up on communication guides When the Little Things Count and The Power of Positive Confrontation, try to sock it to 'em, gathering relevant one-panel comics (""Ma'am, you have to let go,"" urges the cell phone repairman to his reluctant customer), cell phone anecdotes for a Hall of Shame (the boss who called an employee's cell phone to fire him) and plenty of other tidbits (like a recent article in a medical journal that suggests addiction to cigarettes is being replaced by addiction to cell phones). Their book is slightly entertaining, but it also has moments of utter inanity, such as ""A Philosophical Discussion on Why People Shout Into Cell Phones"" (Descartes: ""I have a cell phone, therefore I am. If I shout into my cell phone, therefore I am even more""; the Dalai Lama: ""When the loud speaker is ready to speak properly into a cell phone, his volume button will appear"").