Cell phones

I guess its a standard that everyone should have a cell phone. There is this little 4 year old kid with a flip cell phone and believe or not that little kid knew how to use it. I couldn't believe what I saw. I ask the little boy if he knew what he was holding in his hands and the boy fliped the phone and called home. These young kids shouldn't be carrying one of these.
 
I know what you mean, bluspider. It's surprising how many little kids I see that have cell phones.

It's also surprising how many times I drop mine. I might have done it a few too any times, because the screen won't work sometimes when I flip it open.
 
I have resisted getting one. People I know say it is “weird”. For work it is not usually a problem because the PM has one or a PA does… so if I need to be contacted or need to contact someone it is fairly easy.. there are times when I might like to have one but mostly for convenience rather than need. Is the $50 + per month actually worth it? I could buy a plane ticket somewhere interesting once a year for that. If I do end up getting one is there a service provider I should stay away from? Any recommendations? Anyone else like me still resisting? Or is it just weird?
 
I do not own a cell phone. I don't like the idea that someone can get a hold of me at any place and any time. If I need to get away I don't want to be found. I always admired those Carona commercials. They pretty much visualize my theory of relaxation. :)

Chris
 
I don't think there's anything weird about not wanting one. I find mine indispensible, but you shouldn't get one just to be part of the crowd. However, depending on your job, you may find it valuable because of *other* people's expectations about being able to easily reach you. If you're looking for a carrier, ask people in the same areas as you'll be using your phone for their opinions.
 
I am 31 years old. About two years ago, I took a job as a Cingular Wireless Tech Support call center rep. I had never had a cell phone before. I got two free ones while working there, a 1000 minute and a 500 minute. The day I quite, my lines were taken off the free employee plan and I canceled them with no intention of owning another unless it becomes truly necessary to my family or work. As for companies to stay away from, I would have to go with Cingular....not becuase I hate them for their full on mission to suck the souls of all who work for them...not becuse they license their top secret soul sucking technology out to other corporations (which is their true bread and butter...the cell phone thing is just a front, I assure you), and not even because they are actually owned and operated by a minion of the Devil himself.....

Let me tell you the absolute truth, and I swear this on my manhood to be true and not in the least a fabrication in the interest of being negative towards a former employer...

The level of tech support knowledge of the average rep, both in general cell phone tech, and in operations of the diagnostic software we used, is generally very poor. Most of the reps dread each call, as there is far too little confidence in the ability to fix the bulk of customer problems (bear in mind, most of the problems we're talking about here are not within the equipment....we're talkin you try to call out and get three beeps and dead air, or some error message like "We are sorry, but we do not recognize you as an authorized user" or fast busy signals....voice mail not picking up, all inbound calls going to voicemail, whatever). So you call in and tell us whats going on when you try to use your phone, and we ask you some probing questions (well, good reps, anyway) trying to narrow down whats going on. A vast majority if the issues are actually fixable by manipulating paramaters from the network diagnostic software, but your chances of getting a rep who will know what to do is often very slim (depending on the nature of the problem), and you might spend a long ass time with them trying different crap and hoping for the best, until they get too scared and call the group I was in (the TIG group, who generally does not speak directly to customers, unless there is an escalation) to bail them out. But there were only so few of us TIGers...about 20 of us broken up into three shifts, to cover many hundreds of regular tier II reps (the highest level youd speak to barring an escalation), so they couldnt just call us constantly.

Now, here's the scary part....lets say you've got an issue that NOBODY on the call center level can fix. We'd have to put in a trouble ticket for you, and tell you it might be 24 to 78 hours before it can be fixed.....but what we knew was...it was GAURANTEED that that ticket would not even be looked at for several days, and even then it was likely to be simply closed by the "higher ups" stating that there was not enough info about the problem gathered by the rep to know what was going on, and the "higher ups" were most certainly not going to call the customer and ask for the additional info and troubleshoot the issue further, they were too good to have to talk to customers. Now, granted, a lot of these issues "fixed themselves" hours later, or a couple of days later, as you could go into the call log of the customer and see that calls were now processing, but often....too often for any kind of decent operation, customers issues would be ongoing after an entire month, with them calling back in and raising hell and yelling at us, but we had zero control over it, and we had no way to directly contact the "higher ups" (engineers) to find out what the hell the deal was and get it fixed. Customers would escalate to us (TIG) and raise hell getting the same answers, and then to managers, still getting the same answers....and then being told that if they canceled service they would owe prorated cancelation fees based on the remaining length of their contract, which generally would equate to anywhere from 2 to 5 hunded dollars! Not to mention in my area, the Cingular signal sucked ass.
 
after reading daniel's novel, i still think a cell phone is a good thing to have. in my opinion, it's a good idea to be able to reach, or be reached by people wherever you are, even if it's just for safety reasons.

and you can get a plan for like $30 a month and a free phone if you sign up for a contract. it depends if you've got a monthly income that will support it, i guess. just hope you don't need tech support.
 
i dont have a landline in my house...just my cell. i fuggin love it..cause my cell can do anything...phone, email, internet, instant messenger, mp3, also if i have to go on location with my computer, my cell phone acts as a modem. the next thing i want to get is a gps navigation module for my phone...

i also keep a cheapo phone and charger in my car...just in case...
 
You have no idea how many times my cell phone saved my butt! I remember the inncident that I had which made me decide that a cell phone was needed. Long story short, I got lost in a remote farm land which is the hometown to the KKK. So stopping by and asking for directions from the local gas station which was owned by a Klan member was not a good idea. I was lost and trapped and couldn't find my way home. After that inncident, I got myself a cell phone.
 
Rich Lee said:
i dont have a landline in my house...just my cell. i fuggin love it..cause my cell can do anything...phone, email, internet, instant messenger, mp3, also if i have to go on location with my computer, my cell phone acts as a modem. the next thing i want to get is a gps navigation module for my phone...

i also keep a cheapo phone and charger in my car...just in case...
Click to expand...

Rich, you scare me.... I think if you lost all cell phone use, it may equate to you undergoing a lobotomy. :grin: seriously though, I know lots of people who bypass the whole landline thing for their cell. I'm not one of those because there isnt a plan out there with enough minutes to keep me from paying overages as I have to call my mom a few times everyday.
 
I hated cells phones for years, then I crashed Mtn Biking and had to walk 5mi to my car and drive home with what I thought was a broken collarbone, turned out I just bruised everything posssible in your shoulder...2 days later I had a cell phone. I only pay 20 bucks a month, and am on my 3rd phone in a yaer...they seem to break easy...BUT now since I travel so much I need the cell phone.
L8R
Buck
 
I don't have a land line in the house, so I've just got the cell phone. Another nice thing is that I travel fairly often and I get free long distance anywhere in the US. I can be in a hotel in Baltimore and call my girlfriend for free. It's kinda nice.
 
Cell phones have become an evil necessity just like alot of other things we use on a daily basis. But...they can be a life saver *literally* since most all cells are now made with GPS and tracking devices located in them. ~reservoir~

EDIT: Let me add on thing I forgot. With most Cells now having the ability to be tracked, this moves us closer to the reality portrayed in *Enemy of the State*. It does seem eerie that big brother can check up on us so easily. But I guess the old addage "if you're doing nothing wrong, you should have nothing to worry about" plays true in regards to this. It will be something to see how our privacy continues to be less private as years go by. I think the Patriot Act has scared alot of people silly and I'll be interested to see what else changes over the years. Who knows...maybe the microchips in the hands are next? ~reservoir~
 
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