Saturday, August 18, 2018
The Cell
My phone has recently decided to retire from the communications industry, instead telling me eternally that it is "searching" for wireless service. Although I do hate talking on the phone, I'm not quite ready to say that I'll never do it again, so I have embarked on an escalating series of internet searches and store visits. It is an exciting time to be alive!
Since I've never been one to leave my house if not absolutely necessary, I started out with some folk wisdom from the internet, which was about as helpful as you would expect. Since I didn't need a chat room to tell me to try restarting the phone and resetting it only resulted in me having to re-enter all of my wifi passwords, I was forced to look elsewhere.
The Sprint store was, frankly, terrifying. There was literally an armed robbery outside the store while I was there, and I had to speak with the police. ("The real crime is what's going on with my phone," I told them.) The woman who was "helping" me first told me that I could upgrade to a new phone free of charge and then told me that I could not upgrade under any circumstances no matter how much money I was willing to pay. I guess they take those last two months of my contract pretty seriously. She then told me I needed a new SIM card, but of course she couldn't give me one, because they were not a repair location. When you really have to work for something, you appreciate it more.
Ultimately, I ended up at the Apple store, where there was some sort of very cool in-store concert going on, so everyone had to shout at everyone else about diagnostics and insurance and whatnot. The good news was they would repair the phone for free, but the bad news was that they had to send it away to do it. So I now have a burner for 7-10 days. Seriously, it basically just lets me text and make calls, with the occasional odd gmail. I feel like I'm living in 2005, but without the glamour and convenience of a clamshell.
Anyway, isn't it shameful how addicted we've all become to our phones? I hardly know where to look while I'm not talking to the people around me now. I almost found myself picking up a book.
My phone has recently decided to retire from the communications industry, instead telling me eternally that it is "searching" for wireless service. Although I do hate talking on the phone, I'm not quite ready to say that I'll never do it again, so I have embarked on an escalating series of internet searches and store visits. It is an exciting time to be alive!
Since I've never been one to leave my house if not absolutely necessary, I started out with some folk wisdom from the internet, which was about as helpful as you would expect. Since I didn't need a chat room to tell me to try restarting the phone and resetting it only resulted in me having to re-enter all of my wifi passwords, I was forced to look elsewhere.
The Sprint store was, frankly, terrifying. There was literally an armed robbery outside the store while I was there, and I had to speak with the police. ("The real crime is what's going on with my phone," I told them.) The woman who was "helping" me first told me that I could upgrade to a new phone free of charge and then told me that I could not upgrade under any circumstances no matter how much money I was willing to pay. I guess they take those last two months of my contract pretty seriously. She then told me I needed a new SIM card, but of course she couldn't give me one, because they were not a repair location. When you really have to work for something, you appreciate it more.
Ultimately, I ended up at the Apple store, where there was some sort of very cool in-store concert going on, so everyone had to shout at everyone else about diagnostics and insurance and whatnot. The good news was they would repair the phone for free, but the bad news was that they had to send it away to do it. So I now have a burner for 7-10 days. Seriously, it basically just lets me text and make calls, with the occasional odd gmail. I feel like I'm living in 2005, but without the glamour and convenience of a clamshell.
Anyway, isn't it shameful how addicted we've all become to our phones? I hardly know where to look while I'm not talking to the people around me now. I almost found myself picking up a book.
