I understand where you're coming from. In the business world, cell phones have become necessary. Business does what it needs to to maximize profit. That's how it works. This is why I do not work in that field. I'm a teacher. I do not buy into the current vogue of treating a school like a business. I work in a 100% free lunch 90% minority high school in a generally failing school system in a corrupt and decaying medium sized post industrial city. I put up with truckloads of crap every minute of every day. I'm very often treated as a peon. With a master's and a sixth year degree. I'm not too keen on all the "there is no I in team" stuff. I am keen on people working hard together and respecting each other. Paying AT&T hundreds of dollars a year is not a prerequisite of showing my team support and respect.

If you'd like to make any assumptions about my selfishness or perhaps about my teaching ability, I can't stop you. You've got little idea what it's like to do what I do every day, which runs from cleaning the mouse poop and mold out of my leaky ceilinged asbestos tiled 58-degrees-in-the-winter classroom to taking knives off of kids to being told to rescind or re think any punishment given out to any kid who complains to administration about that particular consequence, for instance marking them late. Hey, I taught in NYC for 5 years and had no idea school systems could be this bad off. The kids are placed ahead of my "team" as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, if I'm so important and a cell phone is so important, then they can provide me with one.

But I still don't think I need one on a bike ride.