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Along Life’s Way
Generation Gap? Duh!
By Lois E. Wilson
I have never owned a cell phone or smartphone. I had never seen a need
for me to be able to call someone or for me to keep others informed of
my activities 24 hours a day. As a result of my not yielding to the age
of advanced devices, today I faced a very trying time. I was trying to
figure out the long distance charges on my land-line telephone bill.
In earlier bills I had discovered a call to an Olympia Washington
telephone number. I didn’t think much about it because my grandson and
his family live in that state. However, this month the number of calls
to the Washington number that I was charged for climbed to six. I knew
that I had never called my grandson that many times in a month. I
checked my phone number list and it was not his number.
I wanted an explanation and reached out by phone to my land-line
company. It had many numbers listed to call under residential or
business use—most seemed to be for paying bills or to purchase new
services. Neither of those choices fit my goal to learn the answer to
my complaint.
Surely I thought, someone had tapped into my phone line and I was
getting billed for their calls. I tried several of the company numbers
listed in the telephone directory. No matter which I tried, I received
a menu with different options to select. None of these gave me the
route to an appropriate destination for my inquiry. At each site I
reached, I was offered a website to try for assistance. I kept saying
aloud, “Representative” to no avail. At last, I heard the phone ring on
the other end, and a person answered.
The customer service person was difficult for me to understand. I
finally asked to speak to another person. I grew tired of waiting for a
response and hung up. That was the first lucky event that happened to
me during this whole incident. If I had stayed on the line, I would
have given the telephone company personnel something to laugh about. I
tried the Olympia number. A message said that it was no longer in
service.
I am a prime example of the generation gap—a person left and lost in a
different time period. Thanks to one of my sons, I have the family
emergency phone numbers programmed into my phones. Therefore, I am not
familiar with them. A year ago, one son moved to Florida from
Washington State. I discovered (before I made a fool of myself with the
phone company) that whenever I call his cell phone, the call is
recorded as going to Olympia.
I was consoled to find that artificial intelligence hasn’t taken over
all our devices. Smartphones may not be so smart after all. Humans are
at times still necessary to confirm where they are located when they
answer their phones. Are you sure your phone knows where you are?
I am not lost between cell towers. My phone knows where I am—I am tethered to it and laughing at myself.
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