Whoop-whoop! Freak alert!
19 01 2008We had a phone call yesterday evening from a major department store to organise delivery of the boys’ main, shared birthday present.
Apart from a crackly phone line, it was all proceeding smoothly and politely until the lady at the store asked for my mobile phone number so the driver could text me when he was heading for our place from his last drop-off.
“I don’t have a mobile,” I replied.
Whoops!
The lady’s tone of voice immediately veered from quietly professional to wary “uh oh, I’m talking to a freak”.
“You don’t have a mobile…,” came her hesitant reply.
“No.”
“How do people contact you then?”
“On the landline or by post.”
Her tone went from faint disbelief to “definite nutter”.
“Can the driver call you on this phone then?”
“Yes, but he’ll probably get the answering machine as I work out in the fields a lot. Oh, and I’d better give you directions…”
“The driver has sat-nav.”
“Yes, but this is a rural area and our post code covers a wide area so it’s best if I describe where we are.”
“You’re in an isolated spot and you don’t have a mobile? I’ll need to check with the Transport Department.”
She was definitely convinced I was a psycho now.
“No problem,” I replied and proceed to describe how to find the croft.
“And you definitely don’t have a mobile so the driver can contact you?”
“No, and I probably won’t be near the phone either, but he should be able to find the place with those directions.”
“Okay then, but I’m not sure we can guarantee delivery in these circumstances…”
“Well, you do say you deliver out this way.”
“Yes, okay. We’ll try to deliver on Monday then. Bye.”
By the end, she couldn’t wait to get off the phone.
It’s funny how often it unnerves people when you tell them you don’t have a mobile phone.
They start acting as if you have a hill-billy accent, a pickup with a gun rack and banjos playing in the background. I’ll lift the needle off the turntable off next time the phone rings…
i like ‘the driver has satnav’ Oh yes, because satnav is completely infallible…no-one has ever got stuck under a bridge, or in a country lane in a truck because they followed their satnav…oh no…
How ridiculous. Even if you do have a mobile they often don’t work - my sister lives in a village, probably very urban by your standards, and can’t get any reception at all! How they expect to rely on the things I don’t know…
Oh yes the sat nav thing, yep I get that too then the frantic phone call from down the road..
‘We can’t find you, we followed the sat nav but it’s a field’
I then ask them describe where they are, and they think I am totally mad as they are sitting out side a field. So they humour me, then get the shock of their life when I tell them exactly where they are and what direction they need to travel in, because they told me there is tree by the road and a farm gate the other side.
They eventually turn up stunned that a house or two is up the track I direct them too and the sat nav says does not exist.
Give me a good old fasioned OS map any day!
my dad spends a lot of time pulling cars out of local green lanes, due to them believiing in sat nav…
Oh, god. I love this part: “And you definitely don’t have a mobile so the driver can contact you?” like you were suddenly going to say “well, there’s that shiny little foldy-thing the boys gave me for Christmas…could THAT be a mobile?”
Satnav. Don’t get me started. GPS devices have no function other than placating Yuppies.
Even worse are the people who go hiking/hill walking/bushwalking expecting their GPS to guide them and their mobile phone to get them out of trouble. I’m a map and compass person — and regard both with a degree of scepticism having seen the effects of magnetic anomalies and out-of-date/inaccurate maps. The idea of relying on a battery powered gadget gives me the horrors. That’s not to say they’re not useful tools, but I’d never rely on one or the the other.
Yep, that’s exactly the kind of person I’m thinking of. I was recovering from an illness and the day I felt good enough to get out of the house, a friend came over to take me for “a walk in the woods.” Now, normally this would be right up my alley, but I was sick and weak. I hadn’t been outside in 60 days. And he thought that his GPS would guide us…it did. Right to the far side of a lake, which we had no choice but to circle around, making our journey twice as long. Back to bed for me for two weeks.
I was a hardcore outdoorsy type growing up, and can tell direction from a stick in the ground if there’s no compass handy. I have nothing but contempt for the GPS gizmos; the only use I’ve ever seen for them is tracking stolen cars. Now THAT is useful.
Had a laugh at that one stoney. We get the same response fairly regularly - we don’t get mobile reception here anyway so not much point. Usually where you might need a mobile for breakdowns in country Australia you also don’t have reception either.
We also don’t use credit cards - cut them up years ago and that is even more interesting. Ah well …..
Both our boys are SES members (Emergency Services) and just came back from a night map reading exercise. Great they still teach these skills somewhere - mind you both have been well trained by their Dad who in his younger days worked survey in remote areas. GPS - not for me thanks. I don’t take kindly to trusting computers.
Oh I laughed at this…sort of…..
We are 4 miles away from a major road….but I get this stuff ALL THE TIME!!!
Goddess knows HOW you put up with this cr@p Stony…it drives ME mad and I am NOT “far out” as you are….
it seems as if not having a mobile is becomming the (AB)norm…………….
oh yes ..and we know how to give a grid reference…has ANYONE found anyone who even knows WTF we are talking about??
I despair sometimes, I really do……………..
Even certain emergency service control rooms struggle with OS grid references these days.
GPS users can’t find my house because we don’t have a road name. The postcode covers our lane and the farm and houses on the road as well (which also doesn’t have a name), so people usually go whizzing by the turning and get stuck in a loop of being told to “turn around when possible”. Using the hamlet name sends you to a village in Angus.
We have to get people to ring us when they get to B&Q. On the landline, as the mobile signal fades at the lane side of the house…
And we’re only one field outside the housing estates.
I had a delivery yesterday from a big supermarket (the monthly shop and I couldn’t be bothered to do it). The driver rang up asking for directions and ASKED if he could find my place using sat nav. I told him no and he didn’t bother with it. A driver with a brain!