Subtitled: Joe's Hubris in the Age of Expensive Cell Phones
Part I: Death
I debated for the past year whether I should finally give up the ghost and leave my parents' cell phone plan. I don't know how many 30-year-olds are still on their parents' plan. This webpage cites a study that, of all eighteen-and-older humans still on their parents' plan, 32% of those humans were 30 years of age or older. So it's not like I was a freak in hanging on to the cell phone number I've had since I was in high school. Plenty of other people do it.
Still, at the same time... I'm almost thirty. Millennials definitely take their time getting to full-on adulthood, but we get there eventually, and getting my own cell phone bill seemed like the next logical step.
If you can imagine it, up until last summer, I didn't pay for my phone at all. Mom and Dad didn't request money, and it wasn't like I was going to request to pay them, ya know? And just like that time my sister made me look good when she had the misfortune of getting pinched for drugs the same weekend I get cited for public urination, my portion of their family phone bill looked financial chump change next to my sisters', who are on their data-chomping phones all the goddamn time (millennials come in all shapes and sizes).
But that changed last summer. If you'll recall, I did something new every day during the summer of 2017 ("new," i.e. YMMV), and on Day 61, I got a tattoo. If you know my Dad, you'll know that one of his pet peeves is tattoos. This is the same dad who found a baggie of coke after my seventeenth birthday party and didn't have anything significant to say about it, but has threatened me and my siblings multiple times with expulsion from the home if we ever dared to get a tattoo.
But I don't live at home anymore, and I don't particularly plan on doing so for the rest of my life (unless Pam finally snaps and kicks me out), so with only a hint of malice, I drunkenly told my dad about my tattoo, a small unobtrusive mark on a place where he never would've known about it if I hadn't stupidly fucking told him. But so anyway, after I told him, he was the one laughing, not me, because apparently we had made some fucking deal—a deal I have no conscious memory of making—a handshake deal that if I ever got a tattoo, then I would have to start paying my phone bill.
Had I recalled making such a deal, the 15-pt font on my asscheek would've remained a secret from my ancestors until they died. So it goes. It could've been worse. $20/month is nothing to get worried about. Still though, $240/year looks so shitty next to my previous $0/year bill (I know, fucking upper-middle-class problems, right? Shame on me). So my thought process throughout the year was: how can I get rid of this fucking phone bill? (Sidenote: tattoo removal was not an option.)
The solution was with me all along: I had a separate cell phone that was paid for through my job, and as far as I could tell, there was no oversight as to how I used it. Whenever my personal phone acted up, I always had the work phone as a reliable backup. What was stopping me from using the work phone full-time? I guess the only reason I could think of was that I didn't want to go through the trouble of letting everyone know that my phone number had changed. I didn't wanna be that guy.
Still, my year with a phone bill was coming to a close, and I was leaning toward moving to the work phone. As it turns out, my decision was made for me. I was taking a piss at the Cape May Winery and decided to check my personal phone, only to see very bright squiggly lines lit up on the screen. It kind of looked like how those scrambled porn channels used to look when you'd scroll past them on basic cable in the '90s. Suffice it to say, it was unusable, and after trying every trick I could think of (take the battery out and put it back in, let the battery die then fully charge it again, slamming the phone against a ceramic tile floor as hard as I could, etc.), I pronounced it dead, and went the rest of my Wildwood vacation without a phone.
It was a pain in the ass, transferring all my contacts to my work phone, and texting everyone to make sure they knew that I had a new phone number. Not to mention, I also felt like an asshole, texting people to warn them of the number change, because that means I had the presumption that people even want or need to contact me in the first place. I can imagine that many people got texts and were like, "why the fuck would I need Joe K***'s number?"
Nevertheless, I had a new/old phone, and I was back on the grid, and life was fine.
Still, at the same time... I'm almost thirty. Millennials definitely take their time getting to full-on adulthood, but we get there eventually, and getting my own cell phone bill seemed like the next logical step.
If you can imagine it, up until last summer, I didn't pay for my phone at all. Mom and Dad didn't request money, and it wasn't like I was going to request to pay them, ya know? And just like that time my sister made me look good when she had the misfortune of getting pinched for drugs the same weekend I get cited for public urination, my portion of their family phone bill looked financial chump change next to my sisters', who are on their data-chomping phones all the goddamn time (millennials come in all shapes and sizes).
But that changed last summer. If you'll recall, I did something new every day during the summer of 2017 ("new," i.e. YMMV), and on Day 61, I got a tattoo. If you know my Dad, you'll know that one of his pet peeves is tattoos. This is the same dad who found a baggie of coke after my seventeenth birthday party and didn't have anything significant to say about it, but has threatened me and my siblings multiple times with expulsion from the home if we ever dared to get a tattoo.
But I don't live at home anymore, and I don't particularly plan on doing so for the rest of my life (unless Pam finally snaps and kicks me out), so with only a hint of malice, I drunkenly told my dad about my tattoo, a small unobtrusive mark on a place where he never would've known about it if I hadn't stupidly fucking told him. But so anyway, after I told him, he was the one laughing, not me, because apparently we had made some fucking deal—a deal I have no conscious memory of making—a handshake deal that if I ever got a tattoo, then I would have to start paying my phone bill.
Had I recalled making such a deal, the 15-pt font on my asscheek would've remained a secret from my ancestors until they died. So it goes. It could've been worse. $20/month is nothing to get worried about. Still though, $240/year looks so shitty next to my previous $0/year bill (I know, fucking upper-middle-class problems, right? Shame on me). So my thought process throughout the year was: how can I get rid of this fucking phone bill? (Sidenote: tattoo removal was not an option.)
The solution was with me all along: I had a separate cell phone that was paid for through my job, and as far as I could tell, there was no oversight as to how I used it. Whenever my personal phone acted up, I always had the work phone as a reliable backup. What was stopping me from using the work phone full-time? I guess the only reason I could think of was that I didn't want to go through the trouble of letting everyone know that my phone number had changed. I didn't wanna be that guy.
Still, my year with a phone bill was coming to a close, and I was leaning toward moving to the work phone. As it turns out, my decision was made for me. I was taking a piss at the Cape May Winery and decided to check my personal phone, only to see very bright squiggly lines lit up on the screen. It kind of looked like how those scrambled porn channels used to look when you'd scroll past them on basic cable in the '90s. Suffice it to say, it was unusable, and after trying every trick I could think of (take the battery out and put it back in, let the battery die then fully charge it again, slamming the phone against a ceramic tile floor as hard as I could, etc.), I pronounced it dead, and went the rest of my Wildwood vacation without a phone.
It was a pain in the ass, transferring all my contacts to my work phone, and texting everyone to make sure they knew that I had a new phone number. Not to mention, I also felt like an asshole, texting people to warn them of the number change, because that means I had the presumption that people even want or need to contact me in the first place. I can imagine that many people got texts and were like, "why the fuck would I need Joe K***'s number?"
Nevertheless, I had a new/old phone, and I was back on the grid, and life was fine.
Part II: More Death, Add Insult
I should've mentioned, however, that my work phone was like four years old already, which in Phone Technology Years is, like, a couple decades old at least. So of course, two weeks into my stint with the Samsung Galaxy S4 provided by **** ****, that motherfucker starts conking out on me too. It wasn't a here-one-day-gone-the-next type deal like my previous phone. This one just started to reset by itself, a few times a day, until eventually it would just keep resetting over and over and over until it became unusable.
No sweat, I thought. I'll just get it replaced. I sent an email to the IT department, requesting what I could do, and they told me to bring the phone up to the IT Help Desk and get it examined. Easy peasy.
The first foreboding sign was that the lady at the help desk couldn't give me an exact length of time that it would take to get it examined. It was that stereotypical government worker "It's not my responsibility so I can't give you any information" bullshit. Wednesday turned into Thursday turned into a holiday weekend without any word from the goddamn IT department about replacing my phone. I was assured multiple times that I was eligible for a new phone and that I would be contacted via email when it was ready.
FINALLY, last Tuesday, I got an email, telling me to please come to the IT department to pick up my new phone. There was also a request to do this before 4 PM. I rushed upstairs at 3:30, only to find the whole IT department empty.
Okay.... FINALLY, FINALLY on Wednesday morning, a full week after I handed in my phone to be replaced, I return to the IT Help Desk. "Ah yes, sir, we have your phone for you." He goes into the cabinet, and pulls out... my old phone. I look at him in disbelief. "Is... is it fixed?" "I don't know, I didn't do anything to it personally." "But they didn't give you any notes on what they did to fix it?" "No, I have no idea." I walk out, stunned that it took a full week for someone to just hand me my goddamn phone back. On the elevator back to my floor, the phone reset itself. Twice.
Clearly someone thought it fit to just wait for a week and give me the phone back without doing jackshit to fix it. Honestly, though, at this point all I can do is roll my eyes at the incompetence of my employers. The city government does not hire the best and the brightest. It's like that old "those who teach gym" joke: Those who can't do, work for the city government, and those who can't work for the city government, work for the city government's IT department.
So I wait, again. Wednesday turned into the weekend, another weekend without a phone. On Monday morning, I was pissed, so sent a strongly worded email to the IT department, asking what the FUCK was taking so long. I received this response:
Where did this come from? How have I been using a work phone for sixteen months now in a work unit where I'm apparently not supposed to have one? Seriously, I watched the whole fucking series of The Sopranos on that phone using the city's data, and no one said boo, and now all of a sudden I'm not supposed to have one? And okay, if I accept that (which I guess I have to), then how in the world did it take almost TWO WEEKS for someone to tell me that I can't have a phone back?
I know I did this to myself, the whole not-having-a-phone thing, but still. The whole thing was extended to an absurd degree because of the general incompetence of my superiors. Ughhhhhhhhh.
No sweat, I thought. I'll just get it replaced. I sent an email to the IT department, requesting what I could do, and they told me to bring the phone up to the IT Help Desk and get it examined. Easy peasy.
The first foreboding sign was that the lady at the help desk couldn't give me an exact length of time that it would take to get it examined. It was that stereotypical government worker "It's not my responsibility so I can't give you any information" bullshit. Wednesday turned into Thursday turned into a holiday weekend without any word from the goddamn IT department about replacing my phone. I was assured multiple times that I was eligible for a new phone and that I would be contacted via email when it was ready.
FINALLY, last Tuesday, I got an email, telling me to please come to the IT department to pick up my new phone. There was also a request to do this before 4 PM. I rushed upstairs at 3:30, only to find the whole IT department empty.
Okay.... FINALLY, FINALLY on Wednesday morning, a full week after I handed in my phone to be replaced, I return to the IT Help Desk. "Ah yes, sir, we have your phone for you." He goes into the cabinet, and pulls out... my old phone. I look at him in disbelief. "Is... is it fixed?" "I don't know, I didn't do anything to it personally." "But they didn't give you any notes on what they did to fix it?" "No, I have no idea." I walk out, stunned that it took a full week for someone to just hand me my goddamn phone back. On the elevator back to my floor, the phone reset itself. Twice.
Clearly someone thought it fit to just wait for a week and give me the phone back without doing jackshit to fix it. Honestly, though, at this point all I can do is roll my eyes at the incompetence of my employers. The city government does not hire the best and the brightest. It's like that old "those who teach gym" joke: Those who can't do, work for the city government, and those who can't work for the city government, work for the city government's IT department.
So I wait, again. Wednesday turned into the weekend, another weekend without a phone. On Monday morning, I was pissed, so sent a strongly worded email to the IT department, asking what the FUCK was taking so long. I received this response:
Good Morning Joseph. Per your supervisor's request you mobile device will not be returned to you. We were recently made aware that you are in a position that does not require a mobile device. As a result of that unfortunately your mobile device has been wiped and is currently in the process to be reassigned to another person who may be in need. Thank you, T**** B***??????????????
Where did this come from? How have I been using a work phone for sixteen months now in a work unit where I'm apparently not supposed to have one? Seriously, I watched the whole fucking series of The Sopranos on that phone using the city's data, and no one said boo, and now all of a sudden I'm not supposed to have one? And okay, if I accept that (which I guess I have to), then how in the world did it take almost TWO WEEKS for someone to tell me that I can't have a phone back?
I know I did this to myself, the whole not-having-a-phone thing, but still. The whole thing was extended to an absurd degree because of the general incompetence of my superiors. Ughhhhhhhhh.
Part III: New Life
A shiny new Motorola Moto arrived in the mail yesterday, but more on that in a second.
First I want to talk about how fucking FREE I felt without a phone. Guys, it felt fucking great. Sure, about 10% of the time it was a pain in the ass—missed texts, missed appointments, having to print out Google Maps directions for the first time in years—but the other 90% of the time, I felt fucking great. It felt like I was unshackled from the chains of constant communication.
My eyes felt better by the end of the day, now that I wasn't squinting at a tiny screen all the goddamn time. I kicked my habit of looking at my phone every five goddamn seconds. I slept like a fucking log at night, now that the screen wasn't burning a hole in my retina as I looked on in the dark.
I told my father-in-law that I didn't have a phone, so he'd have to call Pam if he had any trouble with the babysitting, and he said, "Well, we all survived without them for years, I think you'll be okay without one for now." And that's so fucking true. Who really needs a phone? I went two whole weeks without one, and I didn't die. I didn't lose any friends. I got by (with a little help from my wife/secretary and from FB messenger).
And now, yes, I have my own personal phone, with yet another new number. And I think I figured out a path to doing the whole thing on the cheap side, as is my m.o. There is a phone service provider called Ting that I signed up for. On Ting, you pay what you use. So if you send 100-1000 texts, you add $5 to the bill, but if you send 1001-5000 texts, you add $8 to the bill. Same with minutes. Same with data (I turned off data completely, because it wouldn't be a Joe K*** frugal endeavor without a little inconvenience!).
All in all, I'll hopefully be paying, at most, $30 a month for phone service. Which, if you go back to the start of this unnecessary essay, you'll see is more than what I started with. I was paying $20 a month and I didn't even have to work for it. Now I'm paying $30 a month, and that's IF I tell my friends to please include their emojis in the same text as their words and not a different text, and IF I don't use my phone to scroll through Twitter while I'm sitting on the bus.
If I would've just kept my fucking mouth shut about the tattoo, if I would've just bought a goddamn battery for my work phone instead of trying to finagle my way into a free new one, if I would've just shut up and gave my parents a twenty every month, I wouldn't be here.
"Here" being adulthood, paying my own bills, which I guess is a silver lining if you want to think about it that way.
Fuck cell phones.
First I want to talk about how fucking FREE I felt without a phone. Guys, it felt fucking great. Sure, about 10% of the time it was a pain in the ass—missed texts, missed appointments, having to print out Google Maps directions for the first time in years—but the other 90% of the time, I felt fucking great. It felt like I was unshackled from the chains of constant communication.
My eyes felt better by the end of the day, now that I wasn't squinting at a tiny screen all the goddamn time. I kicked my habit of looking at my phone every five goddamn seconds. I slept like a fucking log at night, now that the screen wasn't burning a hole in my retina as I looked on in the dark.
I told my father-in-law that I didn't have a phone, so he'd have to call Pam if he had any trouble with the babysitting, and he said, "Well, we all survived without them for years, I think you'll be okay without one for now." And that's so fucking true. Who really needs a phone? I went two whole weeks without one, and I didn't die. I didn't lose any friends. I got by (with a little help from my wife/secretary and from FB messenger).
And now, yes, I have my own personal phone, with yet another new number. And I think I figured out a path to doing the whole thing on the cheap side, as is my m.o. There is a phone service provider called Ting that I signed up for. On Ting, you pay what you use. So if you send 100-1000 texts, you add $5 to the bill, but if you send 1001-5000 texts, you add $8 to the bill. Same with minutes. Same with data (I turned off data completely, because it wouldn't be a Joe K*** frugal endeavor without a little inconvenience!).
All in all, I'll hopefully be paying, at most, $30 a month for phone service. Which, if you go back to the start of this unnecessary essay, you'll see is more than what I started with. I was paying $20 a month and I didn't even have to work for it. Now I'm paying $30 a month, and that's IF I tell my friends to please include their emojis in the same text as their words and not a different text, and IF I don't use my phone to scroll through Twitter while I'm sitting on the bus.
If I would've just kept my fucking mouth shut about the tattoo, if I would've just bought a goddamn battery for my work phone instead of trying to finagle my way into a free new one, if I would've just shut up and gave my parents a twenty every month, I wouldn't be here.
"Here" being adulthood, paying my own bills, which I guess is a silver lining if you want to think about it that way.
Fuck cell phones.
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