Talking inside the store? Cell no!
Step inside Helen Bala’s store in the East Village while gabbing on your mobile and you risk getting bounced to the curb.
“No more cellphones,” declared the pioneering anti-cell crusader and manager of the Little Village Postal Service. First you’ll get a sharp look. If the yakking continues, you’ll be ordered to finish your conversation outside.
Even her aging parents are shown the door when they answer their phones.
The problem caught her attention when a messenger came to pick up a package and his phone was making a lot of noise. When he refused to turn it off, she called the company and requested another messenger.
“We’re a neighborhood place, everyone here lives in the East Village, and we all deserve each other’s respect. So that’s when I said, ‘Enough,’ ” she told The Post.
“It all started when some lady was yapping and yapping and a line was growing behind her. I was ringing her up, and she put her hand in my face so she could finish her conversation. I said, ‘Oh, no.’ That was the last straw.”
Customers love the ban, now enforced for about a year.
“It’s great to be forced out of the cell bubble,” said Matt Boardman, who credits a reunion with a childhood friend to the no-cell zone. He said he would never have recognized or heard his old pal had he been on his cell.
“People move to New York City to interact, so that’s exactly what we should do.”
Since Bala posted her hand-scrawled sign on the front door a year ago, neighborhood business managers have been hitting her up for advice on how to enforce no-cellphone zones.
“It’s simple. Just say, ‘No cellphones. Please step outside,’ ” she advised. “And if they’re rude, just say it’s policy and that they need to leave. You’ve got to take a hard line, and people’ll get used to it.”
A 2006 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, The Associated Press and AOL found that 82 percent of all Americans were irritated by loud, annoying cell conversations in public.
Eight percent admitted they had been on the receiving end of criticism or had been stared at pointedly during their own phone calls.
Local hardware stores, coffee shops and clothing retailers – even the women’s locker room in the Downtown Brooklyn YMCA – have banned cellphones.
“We just ignore them if they’re on the phone and tend to the next customer,” said Derek Herbster, a barista at Ninth Street Espresso off Avenue C.
“A guy came in and got all angry when I took the order from the guy behind him, and I just said, ‘Man, you’re on the phone. That’s rude.’ He got off right away and apologized.”
The anti-cell sentiment is spreading.
At Hell’s Kitchen home-giftware store Delphinium, manager Frank Leusner asked a shopper to terminate her conversation, and she shot him an incredulous look.
“I said, ‘Nobody here cares about whether you’re dumping your boyfriend or if you’d look better in bangs,’ ” Leusner said.
So she just left.