Blogatron

The Blogatron Top Nine: Most Hated Modern 'Conveniences'

9. Package Tracking
Yes. While great in theory, the grim fact of the matter is that my package will not arrive faster just because I can go online and see that it was "DELIVERED SORTING STATION MSHPEE 8:01AM." Package tracking does not help us do anything better, except maybe obsess over the relative speed of the SORTING STATION in MSHPEE and for god's sake, just put that thing on a truck already! How hard is it? Because, in the event that there is an actual problem with your package, what do you still have to do? You still have to wend your way through the interminable phone hierarchy of your FedEx or your UPS or your, heaven help us, postal service, in order to talk to someone who must creakily and manually uncover the tangled path your Amazon DVDs took to South Dakota instead of to your doorstep. I am all set with the obsessions, thanks. I do not need to be enabled in developing another one.

8. The Digital Cable Channel Scroll
Like a bad breakup, I hate the digital cable channel scroll only because I don't have it anymore. Have you had this? It is the most beautiful thing in the world. You just press a button and, without interrupting the very important program that might not be as important as other programs elsewhere, the lower half of your TV screen tells you what you are watching now, and – the best part – you can flip through the info on the other stations yourself, without waiting for the agonizing Hooked-on-Phonics pace of the everyman's scroll to get to the channel you are interested in (invariably a channel that has just scrolled out of view whenever you go there). Giving up the digital cable channel scroll is like kicking herion – what's going on? What's this show here? What's on the other channels? What's on the Soap Network at 3:00am? You just don't know. It's like torture. I hate you for getting me into this, digital cable channel scroll.

7. The Electronic Signature Reader
I can't adjust, I don't want to adjust and I am convinced that to do so is to accept the Mark of the Beast. I am still incapable of even registering one of these things in front of me at the counter; when it is time to sign for my credit card I flail about, looking for the paper and the pen, until some bored Target clerk sighs dramatically and gestures to the scratched screen and plastic stylus of my nemesis like she had to for 4,000 other idiots already today. How do you write on these damn things? It's like communicating via Etch-a-Sketch. Suddenly all your missing packages that you are tracking are coming up as "Signed for by Squiggly Line," a stranger is taking your Discover card to the grocery store, and your financial identity has no meaning. Enough!

6. The Second-Counting Walk Sign
Problem the first: What are we, a bunch of babies? You get to the intersection, you see the walk light, you grab your balls and you go. Why must we be reassured that we have a full 37 seconds to cross the street? Those damn cars are just going to have to wait for us if we start out with just a few seconds left on the clock, aren't they now? Hell, yeah. We don't need no stinking second counter. Problem the second: That countdown is stressful, man. Watching the time tick down to the last second as a bunch of crazy-eyed Boston commuters rev their engines and inch into the crosswalk, not seeing pedestrians at all but just itching to hit the gas so they can peel over from the far right into the far left lane ahead of everyone else trying to do the same thing. I'm going to die either way, why do I have to count off the timeline of my impending doom?

5. The Walkie-Talkie Phone
I can't *beep* really talk much trash *beep* about cell phones *beep* in general, since I *beep* have one. But *beep* unless you are on a *beep* security team, or *beep* possibly a bike *beep* messenger, you are just *beep* not important enough to *beep* intrude on our consciousness so *beep* shrilly and *beep* ostentatiously. Must you add all this *beep* beeping to your already inane *beep* conversation? Not to mention that *beep* one side of the idiocy was bad enough – now *beep* I must hear your staticky *beep* companion's input on that *beep* "totally insane night last" *beep* "night, dude?!?" I will *beep* pass, thanks.

4. The Self-Checkout Lane
The self-checkout lane is way too much for me. WAY TOO MUCH. Scan things! Scan things again! What the hell way do you point things, to the side or to the little mirrory part on the bottom? I can never remember because I am always in a blind panic by now! Scan! Scan like the wind! That guy behind me thinks that I am an idiot, I know it! Find the Cortland apples on the screen, where the hell are they, so many kinds of apples, line growing longer behind me! Coupons? Aaaaah! And then you have to race your groceries down to the end of the lane, and bag them before the next person's stuff touches yours and gives it cooties. Oh the terror. I will gladly suffer all the indignities of the regular checkout to avoid all that.

3. Those New 'Foam Applicators' in Liquid Paper
I don't know when these little monstrosities started infiltrating my correction fluid, but I do know they were damn sneaky about it. I was never offered a choice; they just started showing up under the guise of regular old Liquid Paper from the office supply catalog. No warning, no nothing. "Smoother and easier application!" my ass. What's so hard about the brush in the first place? And then, this foam thing, it's a loose cannon. There's no telling how much stuff you've got in there; you try and try to get the flow started to no avail, then all of a sudden it's Liquid Paper Armageddon, a big puddle of white overflowing the page. I do not like this pretender to the correction fluid throne; I do not like the way it horned in on my brush action without so much as a by-your-leave, and I do not like the way it acts now that it's here. Bad foam! Evil foam! Inconsiderate and immoderate foam!

2. The Fax Machine
My problem with the fax machine comes down to trust. In my experience, the fax machine only does what you tell it to on about one attempt out of three, and, to make things worse, it communicates its status in a manner more obscure than the oracle. "PG 5 TRANS OK-1 TRANS NOGOOD-4 LN BUSY/NOT RSP" What? So you are constantly calling people, or getting calls from people, about "Did you get my fax? Where is it? Didja get it now? Is the fax on? Is there a paper jam?" and so on. Madness! We could all read these damn things over the phone to each other, and retype them, and forge each other's signatures, in the time it takes to make our obeisances to the telefax gods.

1. The Pager
The pager equals the fax machine in inscrutability, and then adds the trump card of social anxiety. I hate these damn things; my palms get clammy when I am asked to page someone. There you are, just dialing numbers into the ether, communicating with a device that may or may not be expecting you to enter # or **911* or some other obscure code into it to get the person to actually respond. And there is no phone call I hate to receive more than the following: "This is Mr. X. Someone paged me?" There Mr. X is, all puffed up with the urgency of his mission, tapping his foot with impatience, and never having the slightest idea who out of the 90 people with access to phones here might have buzzed his belt area. How I am to track this person down is not Mr. X's problem; his time is important! He has a pager! And thus it is my job to find the page-placer, despite the very good chance that that person isn't listening, isn't here anymore, or doesn't actually know Mr. X's name, just his function. You cannot even foist Mr. X off onto voice mail like most annoying callers, because that whole process is based on the conviction that you are putting him through to Just the Right Person who will Get Back to Him Right Away, and since he already knows you don't know what the hell is going on, the jig is up there. The whole receptionist/caller power dynamic is just thrown out of whack altogether. Pagers, pfeh! You might as well engage the city of Boston in an immense game of Telephone, asking each person to scream the name of your target to the next person they meet going east in hopes of hitting them eventually. I wash my hands of the whole thing.

Posted by hilatron at March 31, 2005 04:53 PM