Pocket calls
By Charles Miller July 4, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

This week not a single Atención reader wrote to me with a computer-related question, and when this happens I consider it an invitation to venture off into some other area.

A few weeks back I received a “pocket call” from a friend. For those readers not familiar with this twenty-first-century phenomenon, a “pocket call,” “purse call” or “butt call” is what results when someone bumps or sits on a cell phone, inadvertently engaging the redial button.

A lot of us have been the recipients of such calls when some careless cell phone owner forgets to lock the keypad of the phone before dropping it in pocket or purse. When something bumps into the buttons, a phone number is accidentally dialed. Upon answering, all the recipient hears is background noise.

I myself used to make butt calls all the time until I switched to a different style phone…so now that I am not doing this any more I feel safe in ridiculing those who do.

The cell phone is the electronic umbilical cord that nobody seems to want to cut. That is the reason behind why people drop them in pocket, purse or backpack while leaving them turned on.

It is easy to go online and find anecdotes of accidental calls placed during the most inopportune and embarrassing moments. Pocket calls have been known to lead to divorce or worse. One of the worst pocket calls ever has to be from a soldier on the battlefield in Afghanistan. In the confusion of an active firefight, his phone’s redial button was pressed, giving his parents in Oregon a harrowing earful of the battle.

Usually, though, the recipient hears only the jingling of change bouncing around in someone’s pocket…and usually over and over again when whatever triggered the first call happens again and again.

Pocket calls can have serious consequences when accidental calls are made to emergency 911 operators. For an entertaining collection of 911 butt calls, go to http://tinyurl.com/6qrd8o.

Well, all I can say is that it is a good thing cell phone manufacturers are not in the business of making firearms.

The cell phone manufacturers have at least tried to minimize this problem, but it seems that every solution has its limitations. Some cell phones have tried using voice recognition, but all that accomplished was a phone that dialed a number every time it heard someone say the word “home.” Engineers say, “Make something idiot-proof, and someone will come up with a bigger idiot.”

Read some of the newsgroups on the internet and you will find a lot of debate as to whether the cause of “purse calls” is laziness on the part of users who fail to lock the phone keypad, or bad design on the part of cell phone manufacturers. One has to ask, if the pushbuttons are so much of a problem, why some manufacturer does not try to bring back the rotary dial.

Among cell phones, the biggest offender is the simple “candy bar” style phone that has nothing to cover the buttons. Even the flip-style phones are not completely immune from making pocket calls because some have outside buttons for volume control or for taking pictures.

Speaking of cell phones with a built-in camera, there is also a lesser-known phenomenon known as the “pocket picture.” Perhaps the next time Atención readers have no computer-related questions I could expand on that subject.


Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044-415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.