"She complained a lot about that, but there wasn't much she could do about it."

"You're so right! I had a friend 'borrow' a book once, and she had it for more than two years. Every time I asked for it back, she'd apologise and promise to do so, but wouldn't. Finally, one day I asked her if I could borrow $20 and promised to pay her back the next day. I went out and bought a new copy of the book she had borrowed.

 Then, when I saw her next, I told her I was paying her back, but instead of money, I handed her the receipt for the book. She said, 'What's this?' so I explained that I got tired of waiting for her to return my property, so she had just bought me a new copy. She complained a lot about that, but there wasn't much she could do about it."

"Yeah, I had a friend over for dinner once, and I had everything we would be eating out and prepped. She took it upon herself to rummage through my fridge to find more. It wasn’t a big deal, but gosh, it rubbed me the wrong way."

"This one speaks to me. I'm a pretty good pianist (not professional or anything, but pretty good). Pretty much every time I play a song for a group of people, several will whip out their phones without asking and start filming me. It really throws me off—it makes me nervous and makes me mess up.

It just seems so rude to me. What are you doing with this? Nobody else is going to care about seeing this footage. It feels like you just want to prove to the world that you know someone who can play the piano."

"I feel this personally. I was a quiet kid growing up and am still quiet. But I used to have teachers being rude, and even little league coaches who were bullies, saying things like, 'I’m just so quiet, and you should smile more, you always look so angry.' 

It was always adults too; kids my age never bothered me about being quiet. Everyone was cool with me not talking much except adults, who were always making rude remarks. Like, I’m nine, ten, eleven, or fourteen, and you’re a grown adult picking on a kid."

"I have a friend who would do this all the time, so I would stop talking to see how long it took them to notice; usually, a minute or two. So now, when I see them take out their phone, I’ll take mine out and text them what I was going to say. The first time I did that, it shook them.

It helped for a little while, but they eventually got back to it. So I stopped hanging out with them. Two-ish weeks later, they messaged me and asked if everything was alright. I asked them if they remembered our last conversation (it was about them being on their phone all the time when we were doing stuff), and they couldn’t remember.

I told them, 'It’s because you never pay attention to anything but your phone when we hang out.'

They got the hint. This was last year. When we hang out now, I see them actively policing their phone usage. The last time we were mid-conversation, they asked me a question, and as I was answering, they started to reach for their phone, but then pulled their hand back and looked me in the eye.

I hate to have to be the phone police, but it’s impossible to just talk to some people."