Even putting this photo on this post nearly defeated me!
At 61 years of age, I have worked with computers for many years and also had many, many different cellphones. I consider myself – most of the time – quite tech savvy at least for every day stuff. But today, I had cause to doubt myself.
I purchased a new cellphone because my old one got dropped and wasn’t worth the cost of repairing. So I shouted myself a lovely new phone. Now every time I have had a new phone and tried to get email on it, I have had issues. For some reason getting email on my phone requires such mental gymnastics, that I can’t work it out for myself. So, I took my phone into a Vodafone shop – my service provider – and a nice young man helped me set up email on my phone. Magic!
Well, here’s where it gets tricky. I get home and try to access email on my home computer. It says the password is changed and to input the new password. It’s then that I realise that the ‘nice young man’ while helping me in the moment, has omitted to tell me that he has changed the password and what it is! This makes it impossible to change the password on my computer to match the one on the phone, so I can have email on both devices.
So, I ring Vodafone – which only have an 0800 number – and try to sort this out. Firstly, I ask if I can be put through to the store where the young man worked so I could ask him what password he used. Only to be told, that it is not possible to (a) put me through to him or (b) give me the phone number of the store, so that I could ring him. To which I replied, ‘So, isn’t it rather ridiculous that a phone store, does not have a phone to ring?’ He really didn’t have an answer to that and said the only number is the 0800 number.
Next thing he tries to help me…
One thing I find with techo types, is that because they know stuff well, they forget those of us stressing on the other end of the phone, may not be as up with stuff as they are. He talked really fast and rattled off a set of instructions, which must have been at least four sentences long. I tried interrupting, ‘hang on, hang on, start at the beginning’ but it was like stopping a runaway freight train! When he finally paused for breath, I told him he would have to slow it down and give me one instruction at a time. I still had to stop him several times and we were getting nowhere. Then he says to me, ‘you might have to go back into the shop tomorrow and get him to fix it!’ To which I replied, ‘more time, more petrol, parking fees!’ and again asked for a phone number. To which he replied…’only 0800…bla, bla, bla’
I said, ‘I obviously have to go into a store and sort this out’ and that this wasn’t really helpful. I even tried to get my husband to help me, but even he – with his better knowledge of the inner workings of technology than me – bamboozled me when he tried to explain. I found myself in tears because I felt this shouldn’t be so hard and I ‘should’ (how I hate that word) be able to understand instructions and figure this out. I do find one of my Parkies symptoms is that if I get stressed, rushed or overwhelmed I shut down and can’t think straight. I am ever fearful of losing my intelligence and mental abilities.
So, anyway, I managed to change the password on my computer. Yay! Not so yay! Now I can’t access my emails on my phone again! There’s nothing for it. I will have to go into a shop again tomorrow and waste time, energy, gas and feel like an inept old lady into the bargain.
Sometimes technology, quite frankly, sucks!
My journey with Parkinsons 