Having packages Fed-exed to one's front door in order to sit unattended for hours is insane, but also very convenient. So, there it was on her stoop waiting for the first person who came along to pick it up. Luckily that person was our Susan.
Susan is not one for figuring out electronics and planned to bring her new phone to the New Phone Store the following day. There's one right down the block from work and the last time she was there the New Phone Store employee was very helpful. She looked forward to having him help her again.
Upon arrival she did not see her preferred employee, but another stepped up to assist her. She handed over both old and new phones to have done whatever was needed in order to have all her contacts, pictures and notes transferred, as well as the four apps her old phone allowed her to download. Her contribution to this process was to have charged the phone overnight.
The New Phone Store employee worked silently pressing buttons, asking her passwords, none of which she could remember, but which he ultimately was able to circumvent. He continued for a couple of wordless minutes pressing buttons and could have been emptying her bank account for all she knew.
She took notice that each of his fingernails were dirty.
How unusual. Other than her auto mechanic, Susan doesn't normally encounter people who maintain their fingernails in such a state. It was certainly poor hygiene and terrible customer service. She couldn't look at him and wondered how quickly would she be able to plunge her phones into bleach after they were returned to her, and then her own hands after she touched them?
Susan turned completely away from the filthy fingered employee and searched the store for absolutely anything else to look at. There were only two employees; the one emptying Susan's bank account, and another helping a couple next to her. There was a third person, a woman in her forties playing with an iPad-looking thing. She appeared to be standard issue I don't care anymore with unkempt hair, jeans, sneakers, a sweatshirt and...gasp! a name badge.
She was an employee? Heavens!
What kind of a place was this?
Enough with those two. Susan really wants to tell you about her phone. Not the phone so much, but what it has taught her about herself. But first, a sidebar:
Susan had been driving an elderly BMW since February of 2014. Prior to this she spent two years sharing a car with the husband, and by sharing a car she means that the husband had primary custody. Please feel free to refresh your memory by reading THIS and THIS.
Susan liked the elderly BMW, but she didn't love it and only held onto it for misguided sentimental reasons. Each year brought a reduction in automotive quality of life; the motors in the front windows failed and were repaired twice, the CD player refused to either play or vacate the last CD inserted,
the side view mirrors moved on their own and the little inside knob to adjust them didn't work necessitating Susan to manually fix them by hanging out the windows at red lights, dashboard sensors came on & disappeared, the front directional lights were always blowing out and the driver side seat warmer burned Susan's bottom.
There were also BIG under the hood repairs, but you get the idea.
The straw that broke Susan's back came when the car refused to unlock or lock without an additional thousand dollar expenditure.
Two weeks later she had a slightly used new car, one in which everything worked, with a sunroof and bluetooth speakers for perfectly clear hands-free conversations, one with a warranty, and one with which she fell immediately in love.
Two weeks later she had a slightly used new car, one in which everything worked, with a sunroof and bluetooth speakers for perfectly clear hands-free conversations, one with a warranty, and one with which she fell immediately in love.
Worth noting: she cried out loud like a baby widow the first morning she drove it to work.
The car has taught Susan that even though it was nice not to have a car payment for a number of years, it's also nice to spend money on something that is worth having.
Susan never cared about bluetooth until she experienced the ability to hear every word of her phone conversations. Did you see how Susan underlined that sentence? It's important to her. She often would just hang up in the middle of a phone call exhausted because she couldn't raise the speaker phone volume to be loud enough or shove the phone into her ear far enough to hear properly.
For the price of two medium sized repairs Susan purchased an extended warranty and drives worry free because Toyota is in charge of fixing any disasters. Toyota is like her husband now.
Back to the phone.
Month after year Susan put off upgrading her circa 2014 phone.
Worth noting: The husband purchased this phone for himself in his final month on earth and Susan took it over after he died. See a pattern?
Susan didn't want a super fancy phone because she didn't think she used one thoroughly enough to require such high standards. She's not a teenager & didn't listen to music or watch videos, or play games. All she really did was text and talk and look stuff up and read her emails & the NY Times and get places using Google maps and and listen to NPR and call an Uber and do her banking and keep track of everything she wants to remember and wake herself up in the morning and figure out what she can't eat on Weight Watchers and play her wireless speakers at home (thanks Cousin Greg!) and look at Instagram and take pictures.
Susan likes taking pictures and needed a phone with a good camera. So she got a good upgrade.
In the past five days the phone has taught Susan that she should have a new, modern and high functioning phone to take better pictures and listen to Morning Edition as she showers, and hear conversations with tremendous clarity, and store all sorts of information without being threatened with lack of storage, and organize all her pictures into easy accessibility, and if an app interests her she can download it like magic just because she wants to.
And why shouldn't she?
