Smart phones, Silly Coaches

Years ago I had a smartphone. A series of them, actually. I had Blackberries a few years before the iPhone came out, and I loved them. Perhaps a bit too much. I had about six email accounts for different purposes, three different IM handles each on a different platform, active on four different messaging boards, chatted with people around the world and was always doing something online on my crackberry. And I wasn't even on Facebook or Twitter at this point.

Eventually I realized my folly. Smartphones really aren't so smart, they're just a very addictive and expensive form of entertainment. I ditched my smartphone for a $7 flip phone and a $25 a month plan with unlimited text and talk, plus a little data on the side. Yes, I can check email on my phone, but that's about it.

What's great about "smartphones" is that you can be doing something incredibly pointless and still look amazingly important doing it. On my morning commuter train, when I sit on the upper level, I can look down and see just about all the phone screens: Most people are checking FB, watching TV, or playing the latest game fad. Very few folks are answering emails. But everybody's got their phone in their hands and it creeps me out some days.

Head to the rink and you see Coaches on smartphones. Texting, chatting, always about something presumably important, and sometimes they do it during lessons.

I had a spat with a group class coach about texting during classes, and I've had to make it clear that a phone out during my lesson was a big no-no. Why did I have to do this? Who knows. I find it intolerably rude when people answer phones during normal conversation with me, to say nothing of texting or talking to others during time that I've paid up the nose for.

But I've seen it with Kids, too. A coach was in a lesson, and coach took a call. I wanted to go to the kid being coached and say, "Set your coach straight!! Right now!!" (And no, Mom was not in the Rink. Big surprise!) Kids' Group Class coaches regularly "check out" for awhile to text. Even more annoying? These same people with their phones glued to their hands and heads are usually the same people who are slow to respond to communications or are outright unresponsive.

Fortunately I'm working with coaches now who don't have the problem. Both of them are consistent and polite responders. I've actually only seen Coach's smartphone once, and that was when he put my name in it.