LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
CAMP Talk: Get Off My Lap (Top) |
by Bill Sievert |
He dashed into the shop, cell phone in one hand and laptop computer in the other. He was sweating as he called out in an urgent tone of voice, "I seem to have forgotten to pack a suit." A suit? He was wearing a suit, a nice charcoal pinstriped one complete with vest and tie. He also had a briefcase under his arm and the aforesaid office hardware with him. But he failed to bring to the beach the kind of suit you go swimming in. The gentleman represents a new breed of vacationers on our shorespeople who can't leave their jobs, even for a couple days, without carting their high-tech appliances along with them. Last season, I wrote about the annoying proliferation of cell phones on our beaches and in our bistros. This year the cellular army has been joined by a legion of lap-toppers. You can frequently spot them perched at tables in the CAMP Courtyard, nibbling away at a sandwich from Lori's while poring through files of charts and graphs. One woman in a two-piece bikini recently sat in a sunny corner at Java Beach Coffee for the better part of an afternoon, tapping data onto her keyboard. Seeing her made me rather sorry I complained in my last column that most of us who live here at the beach have to work so much during the summer. This new vacation work ethic is not just happening in Rehoboth Beach. A recent survey by Management Recruiters International, a headhunting house for middle to upper level executives, found that 82 per cent of white-collar workers polled admit to taking their work with them on holiday. Nearly a third make business phone calls, and 13 per cent go on line to read and send business emails. Another 13 per cent say they have packed up and returned home from a vacation early due to work-related concerns. It strikes me as a sad state of affairs that technology has made it so easy to intrude upon our vacations. But perhaps things aren't as bleak as they appear. At one point I asked the woman who spent her day on the computer at Java Beach if she was enjoying her stay at the beach. "Absolutely," she said. "My cubicle of an office in Philly doesn't even have a window. Here I'm getting a tan, having a mocha and still getting paid to finish this report." Hmm. I hadn't quite thought of it that way. Still, as a friend who works for a big Washington consulting firm and who recently bought a second home in this area put it, "It makes me feel guilty seeing all these people working. I come over here to get away from my job. If I started responding to emails, I'd be just as tense as I usually am in D.C." My friend does own a portable computer, but he only brought it to Rehoboth once. "I took it to the Renegade's pool one afternoon to write a letter. But everybody wanted to play with it. I finally had to tell this cute guy to get off my lap topand that's not something I would have said to him in any other situation." So my friend only takes his little computer on official business trips, not on his weekend escapes here. More people should think like him. We already have too many sources of stress in this resort town, including more and more episodes of road rage. Too many tourists forget to leave their aggressions behind when they arrive. There is a small sign on Rehoboth Avenue urging drivers to slow down, reminding them to "Relax. You're at the Beach." Next to that sign, city officials should install a stack of airport-style lock boxes and encourage guests to stash away their business gizmos until their departures. Speaking of road rage, some in the throng of 80,000 people who crammed our streets for the annual Fourth of July Fireworks seemed unable to cope with the massive traffic jam that immediately followed the evening's final blast. A group of us watched the spectacle of gridlock from the front deck of the Mallard Guesthouse. As long lines of cars and SUVs stretched from block to block in every direction, some of the folks who only moments earlier had been screaming their delight at the colorful display in the sky began honking their horns and hollering out their windows in disgust at one another. "You're blocking my left turn, you old..." one red-faced man raved to a senior-citizen who simply shrugged her shoulders, unable to move forward or in reverse at the clogged corner of Second St. and Baltimore Ave. Three kids in the backseat of a convertible jumped up and hurled a few choice insults of their own at the impatient man, who flung open his door as if he were coming to get them. Gasps went up from our group on the deck, as we anticipated a brawl. "God Bless America," one of us began to sing, others quickly joining the refrain. Soon, all heads turned to our little band of amateur patriots. The angry man in the street closed the door to his car, and the kids slunk back down in their convertible. The older woman smiled at us. It would be awhile before anyone in any vehicle moved more than an inch or two, but we felt that our little chorus helped prevent an ugly confrontation. "Makes you proud to be an American," one of us said. "Makes me proud not to be stupid enough to be in the car," I added. One suggestion to our visitors: After next year's fireworks display, consider not all jumping into your vehicles at the same time. Take a stroll; stop for dessert, a coffee or a cocktail; do a little window-shopping. You'll have as much fun watching the frustrated drivers in the traffic jam as we did this year. If you can't resist adding to the gridlock, you may as well bring along one of those dreadful cell phones and a laptop computer to keep yourself amused for a couple hours. Bill Sievert's CAMPtalk is a regular feature of LETTERS. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 10, No. 9, July 14, 2000. |