Mobile Phones - Big Problem Here

Is there another country in the world where a mobile phone is such a problem? The problem, as I see it, isn't so much with the actual phone as it is with the owner of the phone. Everyone here has a mobile - and I mean everyone! They are addicted to them. What they did for entertainment or amusement before mobile phones is a mystery. Yes, up until a couple of years ago, mobile camera phones were illegal. Now that they are not - and can you even find a phone that doesn't come with a camera, now? - they are a big problem, here. Blackmail. Lots and lots of abuses of mobile camera phones involving blackmailers.

Beyond the blackmailing issue though is the fact that the mobiles are consuming the time of employees who should be working. Maybe it is just me, but if I was an employer and I was paying someone to work for me for eight hours a day, then I would want them doing just that - working for me - not talking on their mobile. A previous Houseboy and I had issues with this - the houseboy I hired from a service - who spent more time on his mobile than he did cleaning my house. He didn't last long. I've complained at our grocery store that the women there are more interested in chatting and texting than they are with checking out groceries.

Apparently the issue of whether or not teachers should be allowed to use their phones during school hours has become a "hotly debated topic." There doesn't need to be any debate. No one should be allowed to use his or her mobile phone during working hours. If there is an emergency - you know what? You'll find out about it the same way you did before you have a mobile phone. But if teachers are going to be banned from having or using their mobiles, then in the interest of fairness, the ban needs to be applied on a much larger scale.

Why should the guys who sit at the Customs booths be allowed to use their mobiles? Perhaps if they paid a little more attention to their actual job - you know, the work they are being paid to do - then the lines wouldn't get so backed up. The clerks at the grocery stores shouldn't be allowed to be talking and texting. But for our hospital and the medical facilities, on our compound, where somehow mobile phone service is "cut" so that the phones can't be used, I cannot think of a single area or work-place where mobile phones are not in use by those that are being paid to do something else.

Teachers have little to fret about - they won't lose their phones. There will be a lot of talk and that will be it. The issue will be resolved like so many others. It will be swept under the proverbial rug and forgotten in no time. There. Problem solved. Out of sight; out of mind.