Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

Is society as we know it disintegrating? Are societal norms just flying out the window? Are we going to the dogs?

If we are, I will have three over two, on ‘Slingshot’ in the third at Ascot Park please.

Seriously - we should be worrying about David Seymour dining at Bellamy’s on scallops and sparkling water with citrusy notes while he ponders a pay rise, and how to rip a butter-less egg sandwich from the grasp of a starving school kid. But instead we’re chewing on this little nut. We should be looking for a new job, any job but a rugby coaching job, for Rob Penney of the Crushed-aders. But no, we’re angsting about niceness, or the lack thereof.

It started like this.

A receptionist was schmoozing a male customer over the phone and had just about closed the deal when suddenly it disappeared down the toilet. Literally.

And it was all to do with acoustics. The client was still talking, but the ambient sounds had changed.

“Where are you?” inquired the receptionist. And to the accompaniment of tinkling water droplets, the client responded. “Sorry, just taking a leak.”

He wasn’t embarrassed being caught out. He just laughed. Why did he think that was alright? Why did he feel the need to share that moment? Doing business while he was doing his business. Charming. Couldn’t he have waited or politely excused himself?

Couldn’t he figure the acoustics of a dunny – that bathroom tiles don’t absorb sounds, and the many and varied bodily sounds that come with that territory, just bounce around.   

Now, receptionist is no wallflower, she can tough it, but she was deeply offended.

She politely rang off. “Horrible man. Horrible behaviour.”

Then the chat got around to whether his behaviour would have been OK had he not been caught out? Consensus is no it wouldn’t. Just knowing it’s likely to offend should be deterrent enough.

And besides, I was once told that if we don’t observe a few social niceties then we may as well all go back to the jungle.   

It shouldn’t take too much of an imagination to figure where this is all going next.

Because one of our chat-sters had recently tapped into an on-line discussion about the need, or otherwise, to be clothed when on the phone, is clothing requisite before receiving or making a call.

Puerile nonsense maybe – but it seems lots of body proud people do it and it was damn near a game breaker in this next case.

Woman is talking to a man on the phone when he asks if she wants to join him to watch a movie. She accepts but explains she needed to get ready and put some clothes on. He gets all hissy because she had been talking to him while naked. She gets all confused and defensive and doubles down. “I’m just talking to you on the phone. This isn’t the first time I have been on the phone to you while naked.”

That made our Fully Clothed, Sensitive Modern Man even more upset. She had apparently “invalidated his feelings”. She apologises but FCSMM spits the dummy and doesn’t want to watch a movie anymore – naked or otherwise. He says he is now busy. And he doesn’t respond to her entreaties.

People had ready opinion on who was right or wrong and why. But they wouldn’t reveal anything of their own personal behind locked doors and drawn curtains behaviours. Would they ring or answer the phone in the buff? Nuh, creepy question.

“I’m confused” said one on-line contributor. Why would the guy be offended you were on the telephone, as opposed to FaceTime, Skype, video-conferencing, in a state of déshabillé?” And “…it isn’t something to get all sissy over and ghost someone”. And “…either this guy has a crush and knowing and talking about this stuff makes him nervous. Or he’s a kind of a prude.”

And “…perhaps the stick up his bum needs adjusting because he sounds exhausting to have as a friend”.

But I suggest you do really need a dress code for phone conversations? 

Perhaps it’s a generational thing, perhaps a smidgeon of Southern Presbyterianism, but if I knew a someone that was calling me was naked I would feel distinctly uncomfortable. I feel I deserve the right to know and the right not to engage. I would feel taken advantage of. We southerners were so prudish the only time we were naked is between the shower and the wardrobe.

And I know a ‘lights out and curtains drawn’ kind of guy who only found out after 35 years marriage that his wife had a tattoo on her butt. She hooted and he felt his feelings had been invalidated.

I suppose if you were like-minded people then you wouldn’t mind making or receiving an as-God-made-you phone call. Proponents talk of the comfort, the luxuriating, the freedom, the confidence and the empowerment. All very nice.

But tell us first. Or don’t call.