Last night I went to Lincoln Center Avery Fisher Hall to see The Schumann Quartet perform. When the show was about to start, we got the obligatory “Please Silence Your Cell Phones” speech, with the added caveat that it was especially important because the concert was being taped for public radio.

Great. The opening piece, Mozart Adagio and Fugue in C minor for string quartet K. 546 went off flawlessly. Then they began the premiere piece, Berg Lyric Suite for String Quartet (with soprano). Sometime during the fifth movement, I saw people in left orchestra start to shift in their seats. When the movement was over, right before Tony Arnold was to sing, I heard what was causing people to shift in their seats.

ring. ring.ring.ring.ring.

The performers looked to the audience, where the offending sound was coming from.

People started commenting.

Yet, the phone continued to ring, and no one made a move to silence it.

Security appeared, and put his ear to the task, trying to figure out where the ringing was emanating. The offensive device was apparently attached to a woman (in my age range) and the security guard had to actually remove the woman from the auditorium.

So here’s my question:

Why wouldn’t the woman just shut her phone off?

Why did she need to disrupt everything and actually wait to be escorted out?

Never a dull moment….

79 thoughts on “Please Silence you Electronic Devices”

  2. she’s one of those people where comm on sense, rules of polite behavior and good manners don’t apply to her. she probably demanded a refund. I would have given it to her and then told her to leave and never come back.

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  3. LA – you have inspired me this morning. I have been listening to Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C Minor this morning , via Youtube. Although the acoustics are not quite the same, I did have my cell phone turned off. 😁

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  8. That is ridiculous!! What is wrong with people these days!
    But on a good note, I am a country person, but I would love to have the access listening to great shows like this and other things that you are able to do in the city. 🙂 Glad you could enjoy the night, in spite of the rude interruption!

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  11. I think there is some people who think that rules apply to others but not them.

    They litter, they water their lawns regardless of watering days, they talk on their phone while driving, they don’t clean up after their pets or walk their dogs on people beaches where they are not allowed (a big peeve), and generally have an Me and Them attitude.

    As a result they don’t think about rules, or bylaws etc – that’s for THEM, and are actually oblivious to what they are doing is unacceptable or wrong to some extent.

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  12. So I wonder if the recording was cancelled and they are waiting to find the next venue hoping some other rude person decides the world doesn’t revolve around them. Why is it that there is always one in every crowd. 😦

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  14. How unfortunate.
    I’m actually sitting here shaking my head.
    I too am curious about the woman who would just silence the ringing. I find myself wondering why it didn’t quit ringing when it went to voicemail. I can’t imagine how it felt to be that woman.
    Was she humiliated?
    Was she nonplussed?
    Was she simply that entitled?
    I can imagine the level of judgement was off the charts. I wonder though, was there empathy?
    Either way, it’s a night you won’t soon forget!

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  15. No excuse for having left her phone on. But I think that when it began to ring, she may froze in horror, and thought it would stop ringing before she was caught. Can imagine the humiliation of being escorted out of a concert hall — much worse than being thrown out of a bar by a bouncer (not that I’d know anything about either ;-).

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  19. For some people, there seems to be what I would call a lack of awareness. I mean general awareness of what’s happening in the environment around them. They stand in the middle of isles in the grocery store and block them. Their children run wild, they too having no sense of decorum or boundaries. It’s as if all external stimuli are shut off. Their view of the world goes no further than a 3 inch bubble surrounding them and no one else outside of that bubble even registers. Thus, their phone ringing during the concert had more importance than anyone else’s enjoyment of the concert. If you have the audacity to point this out to them, they look like a deer in the headlights.

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  21. I sometimes need my phone on when I’m places because I have that special child at home. BUT its ALWAYS on vibrate and under my bottom so I know its going off. Then wait for an opportunity to go outside and find out if its an emergency. The emergency last week? Can he have cocoa pebbles instead of fruity pebbles?

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  25. I actually Googled this after reading your post to see if someone else, hopefully a newspaper, wrote about the incident in some review afterwards. Nope, nothing. Of course, it’s such a common occurrence now that it’s nothing. But I’m astounded by this person. Such audacity.

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  27. Mine is always on silent but vibrate, unless there’s a situation where I might *genuinely* be required in an emergency. The exception being any live performance, when I turn it off. I can make the choice to attend the performance and not receive the call, or not attend and be able to take the call. Even when nursing my father, I would turn it off in those circumstances. Not just because I believed I was allowed a few hours off duty, but because it was the respectful way to behave to other audience members & performers.

    I did go out with someone once who kept his phone on silent & non-vibrate, but had it switched on so he could take pictures & post them onto social media throughout. I gave him a piece of my mind during the interval, which made the second half awkward …

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