Listening In --but Without Looking Like It

John Caputo, chairman of the department of communications, Chaffey College, deplores the passing in our society of what he calls “civil inattention.”

By that felicitous phrase he means the indifference that used to be affected by waiters or waitresses who, in the line of duty, overheard private conversations.

“It seems to me,” he recalls, “that when I was a customer in a restaurant or shop I would not need to cease my conversation with a friend at table or in line when a waitress or clerk approached.”

He says sociologist Erving Goffman gave this behavior the felicitous name “civil inattention.”

Today, Caputo complains, it is the customer who must practice civil inattention while the clerk or waiter engages in private conversation with his colleague.

“I’ve heard conversation like ‘I don’t go out with fat dudes,’ or ‘God, I can’t wait to get out of here. It’s a madhouse!’

“The results were that when I heard these conversations I held my stomach in and tried not to burden them with my purchases. I suppose I should just get in line and shut up.”

I suppose that, traditionally, people employed in serving the public ought to ignore the private conversations they inevitably overhear.

It is unnerving when your guest at luncheon says, “Men are such pigs,” and the waitress says, “Ain’t it the truth, miss!” Or you say softly to your inamorata across the vichyssoise, “Tonight may be the night,” and the waiter says, “Go for it, buster!”

One suddenly realizes that one’s private little world is not secure. The bubble bursts. Conversation dies.

It is that sort of intrusion, Prof. Caputo is suggesting, that civil inattention is meant to prevent.

I can’t say that I any longer feel violated by servers who join in on my private conversations; perhaps they aren’t that private any longer, and an outside voice is welcomed as a refreshment.

As for waiters and waitresses talking among themselves, my wife and I consider that we are the eavesdroppers; our own conversations ignored, we enjoy looking through those little windows of overheard conversations into the private lives of our waiters and waitresses.

We are intrigued to learn that Debbie is pregnant; that Kevin is taking chiropractic at night school; that Angie is quitting to marry Gus, the busboy; that Fred, the headwaiter, is harassing Carol.

On the other hand, I sometimes miss the stony countenances and lofty distance affected by those old-fashioned waiters who could witness the most intimate exchanges at their tables without suggesting, even by a glance, that they had overheard.

Charles M. Myers, president of Corporate Development International, complains of another kind of situation that calls, though he does not use the phrase, for civil inattention.

“Picture yourself in someone’s office, perhaps as a visitor, colleague, salesman, whatever, and the desk phone rings,” he says. “He or she picks it up and begins what is obviously an important discussion that clearly does not involve you. What are you supposed to do to avoid the appearance of eavesdropping?”

Myers suggests the word fribble for the various diversions the visitor can undertake. “You can studiously examine the pictures on the wall, the books on the bookshelf. . . . You can stare out the window, if there is one. . . .”

All of us have been in this predicament. As Myers suggests, the visitor’s options are limited. He may not read a magazine. That suggests that he has broken off the conversation, and may not be ready to resume it when his host puts down the phone. He may not take out his notebook and write, for the same reason. He, of course, may not simply stare at his host.

His best bet is to sit still looking at a blank wall, and try to give the impression that he has slipped into a state of transcendental meditation from which, of course, he will return when his host has finished his call.

Naturally, he is listening. If the conversation seems to pertain to his business, or is highly personal, he will be all ears. He must try, however, to appear innocent, especially if the conversation is obviously with a paramour, and ends with a tremulous “Love yuh.”

At this point the host turns to his guest with an artificial smile and says, “Well, now, where were we?”

And his visitor, having dropped his pretense of civil inattention, says innocently, “I believe you were saying. . . .”