The Technology Addiction

I'll be the first person to admit that the idea of forgetting my iPhone at home is enough to make me hyperventilate and come down with a case of the cold sweats. If you're like me, you're whole life is stored in your phone. I'm nauseatingly punctual, but I would be more willing to be late somewhere then have to go even an hour without my phone with me.

But it struck me today, just how ridiculously dependent we are on the technology of our phones (and other devises). We're so dependent in fact, that we literally forget basic functions of "outdated technology."

When I arrived at work this morning, the front counter was in a complete tizzy because they couldn't get a fax to go through to a customer. We're not talking an overly geeky group of tech guys either... We're talking about a group of guys that I thank my lucky stars every day that they've figured out how to turn on their computers. The consistent rejection of the fax was met with a stream of expletives and sheer outrage that this machine was a piece of junk. They complained that they've had problems with it from the moment it was installed and that no one (meaning our IT guy) had bothered to replace it despite they're repeated requests.

Since they were in such an uproar, I took the quote back to my desk and faxed it over to the customer. Once I was finished I went back up front to investigate just what could possibly be going on with the machine. See, they use the same kind of machine and mine had worked without any errors and I've never had a problem with it. After closer examination I discovered exactly what was happening. They were not dialing the 1 before the phone number!

Now I understand that in cell phone land it simply auto-corrects this for you and dials the number you actually mean to dial. Land lines people are just not that sophisticated. So when sending a traditional fax, please remember to dial 1 and then the number. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Kids Make Noise??

One of the girls in my office is easily irritated by noise. Not just loud noises, but any noise at all. Provided she is not the one making it of course. It's a running joke with the rest of us to see how long it will take her to complain the moment anyone makes a sound she doesn't approve of. Which, by the way, is basically all of them. A click of a pen, a tap of typing on a keyboard, the feeding of paper in the printer... You name it and she has a hissy fit. I can't count the number of times she's slammed the door to her office because I had to print something.

At the moment, there is a toddler in our waiting room. Her mom is here getting new tires put on her car and as any mom knows, sometimes you have to take them along. Normal people just don't have the luxury of a built in nanny so we don't have to drag our noisy children along with us. The toddler is evidently playing at the moment because we can her a very faint scrapping noise coming through the wall.

This noise didn't even register on my radar. As a parental veteran with 3 kids, I've learned to just tune a vast majority of sounds out. It's the quiet that gets my attention usually, because it means my girls are up to something. However, this tiny minuscule sound evidently sent off a blaring alarm in her head. I just heard her call up to the front desk and ask what all the racket was. Of course, that caught my attention and I started to listen. I could barely hear this noted distraction when I hear her tell the staff member...

"Oh, it's another kid."

Yes, grinch, it is.

Now, currently, she doesn't have any children and I simply cannot wait until she does! I know that she's still lost in lala land celebrating her one month marriage anniversary (which she tells anyone and everyone who will listen, including potential employees she's interviewing), but I'm fairly certain that her rude awaking will not be too terribly far off. Patience is not her virtue. She was dating her now husband for 6 whole months prior to the engagement and was married within that first year. I don't exactly see her waiting to dip her toes into the pregnancy pool too long either.

She's constantly telling us that when she has kids they will: never cry in public, they will not be allowed to run around in public, they will be perfectly behaved at all times. I say good luck! Us moms here in the office have tried to make it clear to her that she's living in a fantasy world, unicorns are not real, and that she needs to be prepared for the inevitable string of tantrums that are in her future whether she likes it or not. But we're not her, so what do we know right?

We're all in agreement that she probably shouldn't reproduce because there's a very likely chance that the poor child will suffer from shaken baby syndrome the first time she has to suffer through hours of endless crying for no reason. Personally, I'd love to be a fly on the wall when that happens and buzz in her ear "We told you so!"

It's just an unavoidable fact of parenthood... Children make noise. Deal with it!