Pain in the Panera

If you want to air your dirty laundry in public, start a blog. That is my advice to the man who walked into my satellite office, a/k/a Panera, the other day, and disrupted the place with his business call.

Panera is a public restaurant where couples, friends, families and others go to be with each other or to eat alone. It also is a place, due to having free WiFi, where people like me go to get online and work, send emails, etc. No matter why we are there, we all expect a certain level of civility.

Obviously, one man did not get the message. He marched into Panera, a flashing Bluetooth on his ear, in the middle of a loud cell phone conversation. It went something like:
"You need to get a hold of Pearlstein!"
"That's right, Pearlstein!"
"Because he owes me fourteen thousand, that's why!"
"He's on the goddamn ski slopes at Jackson Hole, and I can't reach him!"
"That's fourteen big ones!"

I tried to get his attention to give him the palm-down-hand-lowering-international-sign-for-shut-the-fuck-up, but he was facing the other way. This conversation went on for several minutes. Finally, a woman and child came over to his table and sat down. The woman said something to the man. He got up and walked outside, still talking.

Thankfully. Now I could finally get some peace.

Not so fast. At nearly the same ear-splittingvolume, the woman started talking to the kid:
"How was your day at school?"
"Did you do your multiplication tables?"
"What's two times four?"
"What's three times six?"
"What's four times five?"
"What's five times seven?"

I packed my things and got out of there before they could complete the multiplication table.

What makes people think they can behave this way in public? For a measly fourteen large?