Actually, that’s not entirely true. He does own a cell phone, but he says it remains in his car’s glove box and is never charged. This earth-shattering confession came from a guy I met at a volleyball game earlier this week. I was using my iPhone to capture a teammate’s contact information and he asked me about my iPhone to see if he should get one himself. He said he didn’t have one – later amended to the uncharged-in-glove-box story – and was curious about whether or not the iPhone would help him with his business. I was thoroughly confounded. A business owner without a cell phone? In 2009? What?
In between games, I interrogated quizzed him about how he stayed in touch with clients, scheduled appointments, and ran his business in general. It turned out that he simply made use of voicemail on his landlines or had a receptionist who fielded his calls. Someone else sorted through his emails and passed on the ones requiring responses from him. He rarely travelled out of the area and was always at a location where a landline was in easy reach. In the end, I had to admit that it sounded like he didn’t really need a cell phone at all, though I hastily added that an iPhone, or to be fair, another smartphone, could still help him. He could forward landline calls from the alternate office to his cell phone, check his email directly, and use MobileMe or some similar service to keep his calendars in sync over-the-air.
As you may recall, my sister-in-law’s horrifyingly simple dumb phone stunned me as it was, but no cell phone at all? I was off my game and speechless. He later chuckled and said he wished he’d been able to take a picture of my face when he told me that he had no cell phone – apparently, that kind of shock and puzzlement is rarely seen in the absence of an act of God and is worthy of capture. Regardless, I think I managed to explain the iPhone’s capabilities well enough to convince him to get one this summer. He said he’s going to wait for news on the new model after I gave him a quick run-down of the rumors on its specs.
While I am not one to count my chickens before they hatch, I think I’ve convinced him to get one. I will confirm the acquisition later this summer. 10-18. Geeky girl out.
While visiting family in San Diego the weekend before last, my sister-in-law handed me her new cell phone, asking me to show her how to do a few things since, somehow, my day job dictates that I know everything about every cell phone model currently on the market. Of course, it doesn’t, but I give it the old college try when someone hands me their cell phone anyway. Hers happened to be an exceptionally basic flip phone from Verizon. And it stumped me.