I wish you hadn’t sent me that text message

There was a story this week about a juror at Hull Crown Court who sent a text message to another juror sitting on another case (who, apparently, she’d only just met, so why they’d exchanged mobile numbers already is anyone’s guess, but that’s not really the burning issue, here) saying “Hi it’s Danielle from court. Are you doing the kid’s case?” The recipient, aware that this was already lifting the lid on a potentially trial-botching scenario, replied “I can’t talk to you”, but Danielle (described by her solicitor as “not highly intelligent”) decided to go for it anyway, saying “He’s been in prison before and is a paedo and when he broke into the pub he took all the kids underwear xx.” Kiss-kiss.

As annoying text messages go, that’s got to score above the 90th percentile – although, as it turned out, the person receiving the text managed to get herself discharged from the jury and got a £200 reward for reporting it, so that’s not bad going. But the humble SMS has power disproportionate to its minuscule data weight. It’s instant. It’s often sent on a whim and without proper consideration of the consequences. It’s usually lacking in emotional subtlety. It’s brief, to the point and doesn’t mess about. And it’s not the easiest thing in the world to ignore when it arrives on your phone, accompanied by an insistent dinging noise or an electronic recreation of a squawking bird laying a massive egg, prompting you to read it immediately, so you do, and then you discover that you’ve been sacked, or something.

A few days ago I had what I thought was an exceptionally promising run of dates stopped in its tracks by the person I was going on the exceptionally promising run of dates with, via the medium of text message. I found this bloody annoying. I found it hard to divorce my irritation at being rejected from my irritation at having been rejected by a short message delivered by T-Mobile, but delving deep I managed to summon up a kind of breezy insouciance when replying, adding casually that text message isn’t perhaps the best way of going about this kind of thing. To which she replied “I know, text is crap. I tried to draft an email but it was stupidly wordy. Personally, I like bad news delivered remotely so nobody can see or hear my reaction. Sorry.” And I thought, well, fair enough. The person being dumped is always far keener on talking at great, exhaustive length about this kind of thing than the person doing the dumping. And, actually, we should probably salute modern mobile phone technology for allowing the person doing the dumping not to have to hear all that pointless, self-flagellating guff that makes absolutely no difference to the situation, and for preventing the person being dumped from saying any of it.

Still, it wasn’t a communiqué to relish. It sits nicely alongside a batch of text messages I didn’t enjoy receiving, alongside “He died last night” and “Please contact us immediately about suspicious activity on your account” – both of which would have been better delivered in a more personal, more sensitive manner. Maybe I’m demonstrating an almost Victorian attitude to social etiquette, here. But I would be delighted to hear about the most appalling SMS communications you’ve received, if you can be bothered.

Photo: Getty Images

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