Electronic Overload

As if I wasn't already confused enough, now that I'm blogging AND FaceBooking AND sending an occasional newsletter e-blast to nearly 2,ooo people, I have to sit in front of my monitor for a few minutes to decide where it is I'm supposed to be going with my fingers on the keyboard, and to do what? And why? And after I push the right buttons, what do I do next, to get there from here?

It's like reaching for my Blackberry to change the channel on the TV, or trying to answer the remote control when I hear something ring.

Which brings me to a pet peeve. I understand the reasoning (sort of) behind hiring workers in foreign countries to do telemarketing. But when I hear someone on the line who trips over their own tongue trying to pronounce the name of my business, and when they give their own name (Nancy or Susan or Robert or Jake, for example) and you have to ask them to repeat it three times before you can penetrate their accent, I lose patience. And they lose me. Click. It seems that our country is paying them not only to pester us incessantly, but also to practice their English on us when they've had few if any actual lessons. Then I feel guilty. Maybe I should have helped them out, like a teacher's aide does in our school system. "Were you trying to say pul-eeze or po-leese? Are you being polite or is this some sort of emergency?"

And what about those stupid calls when you run like mad to answer the phone and the line is dead or you hear some weird signal that isn't even a person. Next thing you know it happens again. Apparently there are machines that call us to find out when the best time is to have a non-machine call us. Or to fax us. Or whatever. Sometimes I make a pretty good guess at it when I see a weird number on my caller ID, but I've been wrong more than once and when I discover it's actually a client calling, I have to immediately switch from my "Why don't you just leave me the blank alone" voice to my "Oh! Great to hear from you" voice. This takes some amount of skill.

Yes, I've put my number on all the "do not call" lists I'm aware of, but this doesn't seem to help. I think it may actually be a scheme whereby your number is sold to other companies so they have more people to pester.

You know it's getting bad when you pull up a chair in front of the microwave and point your cordless mouse at its door, click away, and wonder what's wrong with your reception now, or when you push the button on your mattress warmer control expecting the ceiling fan to accelerate.

But worst of all is when you're talking to your husband about the chores you need him to do, and he points his electronic car key at you, trying to find the mute button.