Isnt it frustrating when you need to make that one important call and all the phone-booths are taken? You patiently wait and the person on the phone cant stop talking about their new hairdo, watch or whatever else. Damn if only they knew how urgent this call was for me. But no. They never seem to care (George from seinfeld dedicated an episode on this frustrating experience). But that could change with the bid phone. For every line of payphones one is designated a bid phone. Where the one who bids highest gets to use the service. How it works is this there is a LCD display that shows how much the person using the booth has paid for this call (it could be that the person had already outbid someone else and so the number will be high). If you are really in a hurry you can outbid him and he/she will hear a message saying how many minutes he/she has left in the current call (or maybe there could be just a display on the phone that shows this). The higher you bid the more the time is shaved off from the other persons call. If the person on the phone wants to outbid you again he/she just drops in the bid amount and continues talking. If they fail to do that then after the designated time his phone disconnects and you get to make your call. Once you get to the phone you cannot connect unless you have paid the amount you bid.
Prepare for a few very ugly stares.-- nomadic_wonderer, Feb 17 2004 I'll give you $1 USD to insert paragraph breaks in that.-- normzone, Feb 17 2004 [normzone] It's been done. Now my money. I knew you'd chicken out.-- nomadic_wonderer, Feb 17 2004 Are there still such things as pay phones?-- waugsqueke, Feb 17 2004 [waugsqueke] I think i see them every now and then-- nomadic_wonderer, Feb 17 2004 Email me and let me know where you want the money sent to.-- normzone, Feb 18 2004 Get a cell phone.-- k_sra, Feb 18 2004 Somehow, this is still better than working.-- yabba do yabba dabba, Feb 18 2004 The layout on the idea text is broken. Don't put <br> between lines, just leave an empty lines between paragraphs.
(Not all browsers display the idea paragraph in the same font, or with the same number of characters on each line.)-- jutta, Sep 05 2006 random, halfbakery