You're right on the money about all this frantic busyness going on everywhere. A couple of years ago I ran into a high school classmate getting ready to board the same post-Christmas flight in our small community, a 40-minute hop to the nearest major airport. She was carrying a chic designer clutch purse and a slim laptop case. Because the current stringent rules only allowed one item on board per passenger, a second carry-on to be gate-checked, she had to give up her precious laptop. I let her throw her hissy fit without offering the folded-up canvas tote (which would have held both items quite nicely) I had tucked into my purse, partly because it amused me and partly because it might have been rejected for not coordinating with her outfit. Apparently her high-end job as a telecom sales manager required her to slave away even for a flight lasting less than an hour.

I wasn't impressed. People who are that busy, in that much of a hurry, have always struck me as woefully disorganized. In fact, after I got over my rather nasty little bout of schadenfreude, I was a little sad at seeing this home-town example of hurry sickness. In order to look busy and important, my old classmate had sacrificed common sense and ordinary dignity. You certainly know that this little comedy used to be called "keeping up with the Joneses," then "the rat race," and neither term is particularly complimentary. But that just doesn't seem to be a deterrent.

Perhaps these folks are driven by fear, like OldGuy's greedy birds, who never know if they'll have another chance to score big and make foolish decisions because of that.

All I know is that I make time to mosey, and to meander, too. I did enough silly headless wing-flapping as a younger woman, and I'll be damned if I'll make a fool of myself like that again. I'll hurry if I have to, if it's necessary, if it's an emergency. Otherwise, I prefer to plan ahead. I like to think I look a little smarter that way -- a little more grown-up. It's sure easier on the nerves.

You hit the nail on the head when you suggest that super-busy people are probably disorganized. When I worked in an office, I noticed that the people who were most frequently doing headless chicken impersonations were also the least likely to meet deadlines and the most likely to produce do-overs. As someone who was at the end of the process in a quality-control role, I was in a position to spot this. Their bosses were often fooled because these people always appeared to be working extra hard, but if these hyperactive individuals had hit the pause button more often and had "multitasked" less, they could have been more efficient.

I also think that the appearance of "busyness" is a ploy that some people use to exude an aura of self-importance. Nowhere is this more evident than in how people use their cell phones. They think it's a public advertisement that people want to talk to and listen to them. If you've ever eavesdropped on a cell phone conversation, as I have done occasionally, the one fact that is obvious is how many of these conversations are trivial. The old axiom about engaging the brain before moving the mouth no longer seems to apply.
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Rich Turner (The Curmudgeon Himself)

(I think the best example of unimportant use of a cell phone I have witnessed was a 50-year-old man informing his mother he was standing in line in the restroom.)

I find I must wag a languid, mildly admonitory finger at the both of you, though. While it is great fun to cook up outrageous schemes for ridding oneself of the nuisance of incessant cell-phoning in one's vicinity, I must caution you that the ideas so far, such as obtaining an illegal device to block calls or using a whistle, ear-splitting, to further disrupt the auditory environment, seem not so much curmudgeonly as, frankly, adolescent. Tut-tut, etc.

I'm hoping the two of you -- and everyone else who might be interested, of course -- can help me resolve, legally and cleverly and politely, one of the two cell-phone etiquette violations I routinely encounter. The first, which I call I Am Not a Radio, has to do with the distressing tendency of friends and relatives to call me up at home for a chat during a long commute or while audibly engaging in other activities, such as running a sewing machine. I rather bluntly ask, when I suspect a tricky eye-to-hand operation is taking place during the conversation, whether my caller is busy, and usually get a confession of driving (traffic is always light) or sewing ("Oh, you heard that?"). I then politely suggest she call back when she's not busy, at which time I'd love to continue our chat, and hang up.

The second problem, for which I seek suggestions, has to do with a neighbor who apparently cannot drive or enter or exit her house without talking on her cell phone. We live in a Chicago-style bungalow on a narrow lot (CeeBee knows exactly what I'm talking about; these charming brick houses are arranged cheek-by-jowl), and our bedroom window faces the neighbor's driveway and front door. This woman, the neighbor, apparently runs a public house of some sort, and often returns to her house in the wee hours of the morning. I am often awakened by the buzz-saw tones of this petite flower, loudly declaiming in Anglo-Saxon monosyllables, complete with Northern Cities Vowel Shift, to some wakeful unfortunate about some thing or someone.

I am usually too rattled to do the obvious, which is stick my head out the window and bellow like a local for her to shut the hell up, people are tryin' to sleep in here, already. In the morning, I am glad of my reticence, but the next time it happens, I find myself unprepared, at 2 a.m., with a firm but polite way to convey my displeasure. Since this problem fails to wake my husband, and I am, after all, a woman of a certain age, I feel it incumbent upon me to handle the problem myself. I just can't come up with the right timing or words, though. For some reason, problems with neighbors tend to be stickier than problems with friends or relatives, who do not (thank god) live next door.

But you have to admit, they surely would be fun!

I can't help you with your first problem. Being a known curmudgeon, I don't get trivial calls, so I am not experienced in handling them, at least not tactfully.

In the second case, I can imagine what you are going through, having the memory of living (for a short time) many years ago next to a neighbor who began making shipping pallets in his garage on third shift. I intend to die here where I am now with seldom more than owls, coyotes, and a distant train to make noise at night. In the same situation, I’m afraid that I would simply have to use the tactic you have already considered, telling this inconsiderate person, in a carefully pre-planned choice of delivery, to shut the hell up. It works. I’ve done it. What kind of a friendship would you be risking? It sounds like she is already making it clear that your welfare is of no concern to her because you are not a friend of hers. But if she does care and it’s just a case of thoughtlessness, things should work out fine. It’s not a time to mosey, meander, or saunter. This is some of the madness of frantic lives that caused this thread.

If people's behavior is harmful only to them, that's their business. When it negatively affects us, we should let them know about it. Perhaps all they need is a gentle reminder. If they are just inconsiderate by nature, we have no recourse but to make them pay for it, preferably in a way that will entertain or amuse us. That's where a phone zapper comes in.