Friday, June 6, 2008

Cut me a deal, yo

This afternoon I went to the mall to try and convince a telephone company to let me switch my old phone onto their network. It's a phone from a different company, but both companies are using the same standard. I'm sick of paying all these stupid system access fees and whatnot, which double my bill, for a cellphone that I only use a few times a month. Yes, you heard me correctly, a few times a month. Not a few times a day or a few times a week.

An employee flocked to me like a moth to a candle and started trying to pitch their new phones. Maybe I should cut in here and describe the employee before I go any further. She had cutting scars up and down her forearms, AND A FRESH CUT. A FRESH CUT. VERY RECENT. At the end of the day! While some of her coworkers wore long sleeves, she chose to wear short sleeves. Is this hygenic when you're BLEEDING? In most occupations, you have to cover up an open wound while you're at work. Regardless of how you came to acquire said wound, it's dangerous and irresponsible to bleed on other people! And wouldn't you want to hide the fact that you've been cutting from your employer? In retrospect, I hope her employer notices and helps her find a therapist or someone else who can help her with whatever problems she may be having that are leading her to cutting.

Anyway, I explained to her that I already had a phone, I just wanted to switch it to their network because their phone company offers employees from my company a special (read: awesome, no system access fee) plan. Long story short, she could not understand this. She explained that her phone company does not offer employee discounts to employees of other phone companies. I do not work for a phone company. Somehow in the conversation the word "Firmware" comes up, and she says, "Oh, your phone has no firmware because it can't take pictures."

Eventually we sort things out, or so I think. Sadly, I can't use my current phone on their network because it's GSM and the network isn't. So, I made the mistake of looking at phones in a store full of salespeople on commission. They actually refused to sell me the cheapest model to protect me from myself because if I bought such a plain, simple phone I would inevitably end up miserable and unpopular and forever resent myself for making that decision. Is it really so strange to want my phone to make and receive calls, my Ipod to download and play songs, my camera to take and share pictures, and my computer to surf the internet? I don't want some overpriced stupid thing that does all of those things poorly.

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