Charting Rudeness?

I've been working on a little data collection project during WEP, and now that it's over, I'm dismayed and pleased to show you what I've been up to for the last couple of weeks.

During all of the WEP classes and lectures I had to go to, I've been keeping track of the number of cell phone rings each day.  This all got started when in the first lecture I attended there were at least 3 rings in the first 15 minutes of the lecture!  I don't know if people here realize how rude they are being, but oh man are they ever rude.

The worst part is that people would answer their phones and actually have hushed conversations instead of ignoring the call or leaving the room.

So here you go, cell phone rings per hour for WEP.  A few notes, I started on Saturday because that's when our work week starts and thus Thursday and Friday as our weekend have less or no data because I didn't have to go to lectures. 

 Also, the Sunday where there were 7 rings per hour was actually all from the same lecture.  This was an especially awful presentation so the big jump in cell phone noises doesn't surprise me.

Overall there ended up being an average of about 2.2 cell phone rings each hour and 114 rings in total over 13 days, which is more than enough to be annoying and certainly enough to be rude.  I'm really irritated and disappointed that there were so many distractions.  Are people so busy these days that they can't turn off their phones for an hour?

Even worse than the cell phones was the sheer number of people who showed up late, but that's not at all surprising and in fact is very common.  So common, that for my 9 am class this semester, only nine people out of 32 have managed to show up on time!

I'm just shocked.  What do you think, am I overreacting?

Not Throwing Good Money After Bad

Have you ever gotten a gift that turned out being a big money suck?  Well I think I've gotten one of those: my cell phone!  When we arrived on campus back in August, the university was kind enough to have Mobiliy SIM cards ready and waiting for us.  They were even preloaded with 100 SAR ($27) worth of credit; all we needed to do was go out and purchase a phone.

This has been a really good solution as we don't make many calls here and our apartment also has a land line phone which is free for local calls.  Fast forward three months and now we're running into problems.  It turns out that credit purchased for pre-paid phones has an expiration date.  This alone doesn't make sense, as it's not something that can physically spoil or go bad, it's simply a tool used by Mobiliy and other cell phone providers to increase profits for low end users.

Initially we thought purchasing more credit would be a good solution, but the amount of time the new credits will extend phone service is lack luster.  To get an additional two months of service, we would need to add 60 SAR ($16) of credit.  While this seems like an inconsequential amount of money, especially when compared to the $100+ monthly cellphone plans that aren't uncommon in the US, it is still spending money that we know won't be used.

It took me 3 months to use 40 SAR worth of credit, so why would I spend an additional 60 SAR for only two months of service?  When it comes down to it, I'm just not willing to send money to a company that won't offer the level of service I need.  And I certainly won't pay extra for what I know I won't use.

So, it looks like I'll be abandoning my cell phone in favor of the land line.  Don't worry, if it doesn't work out, the phone has two months of inactive status where the it can be reactivated for free.

Anyone else have terrible cell phone stories to share?