Intrusive technology hinders real communication

While waiting for a set of new tires at the car dealership, I could not make conversation a fellow time-passing customer because the television was yapping too loudly at no one and everyone. Same deafening decibels occurred with the built-in wall messaging video unit next to the elevator at a large, regional hospital where I went to visit a friend. So I took the stairs.

At a grocery store, an electronic eye unit sensed my presence and offered samples to me as I walked by, interrupting both my train of thought and the conversation I was having with my son. At another store, flashing lights and a digital voice proclaimed which checkout lane was available. At the gas station, I had convenience store items pitched at me both audibly and visually from the pump.

When I shared my techno-overwhelm with my kids, 13 and 14, they gave me big, technology-desensitized stares and told me I was overreacting. At least that’s what I think they said, but I couldn’t tell for sure over the blare of the advertisement that played at the start of the YouTube clip my son was accessing from my iPhone. I was left alone to wrestle with the idea that all the new audio/visual communication stimulation is rapidly getting old.

I have an ongoing fantasy that centers around my going on a long trip to a faraway land where I cannot be bothered by technology. When I recently watched the movie “Unbroken” on the big screen, I caught myself envying the three shot down WWII plane guys stranded at sea in an inflatable boat because they DIDN’T have to have contact with anyone. That should tell you something.

Such nostalgic thoughts take me back to a simpler time when my stand-alone answering machine, with its teeny-tiny cassette tapes, was the most high-tech item I owned. Although my cutting-edge joy over the device’s convenience was short-lived due to a stalker leaving sexually-threatening messages on it, my point is the device was quietly parked on my kitchen counter until I chose to interact with it.

The same can’t be said for many of today’s personally-intrusive, carry-with-you-everywhere devices, which have resulted in people constantly calling, texting, emailing, tweeting, poking and prodding one another. Mostly because they can.

If there’s something that’s been lost in communication, besides peace and quiet, it’s the difference between urgent and important. Everything allegedly needs immediate attention because we now have 24/7 access. But that doesn’t make it important.

To satisfy our growing societal need for immediate gratification, even the medical field has acquiesced by establishing “immediate” care establishments on every other corner. The fact some of these are located in malls says it all, doesn’t it? One-stop instant answer shopping.

Part of the driving force behind the immediate care concept was what was observed unfolding in emergency rooms across the country: the emerging definition of “emergency” broadening to include pink-eye, colds and ingrown toenails, an outgrowth of our increasingly faulty national belief we are too special to wait. For anything.

Several years ago I attempted to call a colleague in the counseling field, but his receptionist said he was in session and therefore unavailable. “Can I have his voicemail or leave a message?” was my next question. To my surprise, I was told no, you either catch him or you don’t, but he didn’t deal with messages. One could only wish!

At the time I thought, “What a selfish %$*@&!” But I have since mentally promoted to sainthood this man who refused to be universally available. And further to his credit, when you did get to talk with him, you received his undivided attention, an experience as rarely encountered anymore as it is highly desirable.

One of my favorite places to go as a child was my grandmother’s house. In addition to her wonderful cooking, what made it special was the visit represented a time-out amidst the pressures and distractions of life. No alarm went off on the cell phone she didn’t have while I was pouring out my heart and she was pouring out stovetop-stirred hot cocoa. If focus has become as hopelessly old-fashioned as that hot cocoa, I stand happily accused as archaic.

Everything about life learned via waitressing

I spent eight years of college waitressing. And it’s a good thing, because my step-and-fetch-it server skills have never come in handier than now that I am no longer in restaurant work.

During job interviews, I have been asked about which former job taught me the most. Usually, I’ve chosen to lie (something I learned extremely well while waitressing!) because I can tell the interviewers want some profound insight garnered from a white-collar, so-called “professional” position. But in reality, my most useful skills were restaurant-honed. Here are the top five:

1. Taking Orders is Part of Life – The world is full of wannabe leaders and that’s because it’s far easier to be the leader than to be the follower of someone else’s cockamamie (now there’s a word you never see in print and probably didn’t know how to spell!) plans. But the habit of pulling out a pad and pencil and taking dinner dictation and accepting dictatorship taught me how to do the subservient thing for as long as I need to put up with someone else’s self-important nonsense. The line of shallow types wanting to be in charge never shortens.
2. Faking Patience is Virtuous – I used to pray for patience, but my prayers green-lighted God sending me wait-requiring obstacles in the form of indecisive people, which begat patience. Here’s a sample exchange, my thoughts in parentheses. Diner: “Hmmm, should I have steak or seafood? I just don’t know. (If you don’t know, how could I possibly know?) What do you think I should have? (How about the steak?) Well, I really don’t think so. (So don’t freakin’ order it!) Do you think I should order the orange roughy instead? (I don’t really care, but I’ve got other tables to wait on.) It doesn’t taste really fishy, does it? (Duh! They call it fish for a reason.)  What are other people having? (Who cares!) What did I order the last time I ate here? (Let me go get the chart I keep on these things!) Did I like it? (I hate YOU!) Why don’t I have a drink while I decide? (I’m the one who needs a drink!) What wines are sold by the glass? (Far too many to name. And I have other customers.) I was thinking maybe Chablis, but it depends on what I have for dinner. Maybe I should go with beer, instead . . . (I think you should go somewhere else instead!) What would you do if you were me? (May I suggest self-harm?)
3. Pseudeo-Enthusisam Will Suffice – Remaining silent is one thing, but saying something totally opposite what you’re feeling is an advanced skill. Working for tips requires the ability to disengage mouth from brain. Unless you’re serving at rudeness-themed Ed Debevic’s, you’d better swallow the smart remarks that are simply begging to be uttered, lest you find yourself out begging on the streets. Fortunately, smarmy customer servicy, pseudo-sincerity comes more easily over time: “You are going to be sooooo happy with that entrée!” Make a game of sounding as enthusiastic as a 1950’s children’s TV show host. In the interim, best to keep it zipped.
4. Accurate People Reading Reigns – Most of the above is successful only following the proper reading of people. While it’s possible to read some folks like a book, others are more like a warning label: Highly Combustible! Best always to err on the side of respect when you need to discern whether you should call someone Sir, Mr. Smith or Bob (assuming that is the person’s name). Some people are just as offended to not be treated familiarly as others are offended when they’re not referred to as “sir.” Get this one right.
5. Assumptions are Presumptuous – I quickly learned some diners viewed being complimentary to me as a suitable enough tip. Not okay, as my sub-minimum wage job wouldn’t pay the bills. Conversely, some people who looked and seemed like they couldn’t afford a tip or who literally gave me a run for my money ended up leaving enough to make up for the deadbeats. Treat everyone well.

There it is: everything to be successful as a restaurant server and citizen of the world.

Pope wants to cure Curia’s common cold

I’m the first person to admit I know next to nothing about the current Pope. Well, except the answer to the trite question, “Is the Pope Catholic?” For the most part lately, I live under a rock, only coming out long enough to go to work or to haul kids somewhere, with little time to devote to anything that is not absolutely necessary. Along with the rest of my so-called life, Pope-watching falls into the unnecessary category.

So it’s really unusual anything about him came across my radar. I assure it was absolutely accidental and happened through reading a friend’s leadership blog in which she mentioned a Christmastime address Pope Francis gave to the assembled Roman Curia (aka central Catholic Church higher-ups).

Apparently, the focus of the Pope’s Dec. 22 remarks was not the typical celebratory glad tidings of joy and peace message to which the group (and the rest of the world!) is accustomed near Christmas, as he both topically and tonally took them to task for illnesses and temptations.

Far be it from me to be an apologist for the Catholics or any other religious group, but I think there’s been a tendency to elevate church leadership to a ridiculously supernatural level, making a topple from grace (human, as opposed to Divine) a much steeper fall. I truly appreciate the Pope, as a leader, addressing what essentially amounts to petty workplace misbehaviors (“illnesses and temptations”) and not being afraid to verbally rap the very human knuckles of the senior governing cardinals, bishops and priests of the Vatican.

While I try to keep table talk relatively light at my own seasonal gatherings, there are times I need to use that assembly time to re-align attitudes, judgments and behaviors. Sometimes a little coal in the stocking along with the candy gets a lot of attention. And that’s what the Pope Francis received from the press for his remarks. Granted, people should know better in every area of their lives. But we don’t.

What exactly did Pope Francis say? You can find the full transcript all over the Internet, but in an online WordPress commentary at audacityandsupposition.com, businessman turned Christian blogger Robert Robinson succinctly summarized the15 ailments addressed by Pope Francis:

1. Feeling immortal, immune or indispensable.

2. Working too hard.

3. Becoming spiritually and mentally hardened.

4. Planning too much.

5. Working without coordination, like an orchestra that produces noise.

6. Having ‘spiritual Alzheimer’s.’

7. Being rivals or boastful.

8. Suffering from ‘existential schizophrenia.’

9. Committing the “terrorism of gossip.”

10. Glorifying one’s bosses.

11. Being indifferent to others.

12. Having a ‘funereal face.’

13. Wanting more.

14. Forming ‘closed circles’ that seek to be stronger than the whole.

15. Seeking worldly profit and showing off.

Wow, what a list, kind of a post-Papal appointment public pettiness parade. Not how you think it should or hope it would work. But that’s reality. Let me further reduce to common language and graspable reality the Pope-observed problems inherent to the Curia: invincibility, busyness, indifference, self-direction, unilateralism, pride, arrogance, self-reliance, catty back-stabbing, butt-kissing, schadenfreude, dourness, greed, cliquishness, and empire-building.

Surprised? These behaviors sound pretty human to me. Not just selfishness and mission-drifting, but also a real waste of the special gifting God placed on those individuals that enabled them to move up the organizational ranks within the Catholic Church. It makes you speculate as to the huge amount of good the respective members of the Curia might be able to do if they weren’t so busy looking out for their own interests.

The same goes for the rest of us. Are we individually and collectively living up to our God-given potentials to make a difference in the world? Or do we keep one eye occasionally upon Jesus, while the other eye is consistently upon ourselves? No wonder I end up feeling cross-eyed in moral cross-fire.

Question to self: what kind of real, direct good could I be doing if I weren’t living under the rock of daily responsibilities that require little character and offer little return (save a paycheck) toward meeting the deeper needs of my family, friends and community? Maybe Pope Francis was speaking to us all. I heard and will heed.

Without cheap flicks, movies are an investment

If you caught me sobbing uncontrollably at the end of the summer, it was due to the announcement Battle Creek’s Cheap Flicks movie theater was closing its doors. The area’s best entertainment value “where all seats are just three dollars” would be no more.

Was I alone in mourning the passing of this unique venue that enabled me to spend an enjoyable evening at the movies without spending a fortune? I could afford to take along my children and a handful of their friends. It was nice to take in an evening show, too, not just the cheaper matinees at other theaters, which still required stopping to pick up and cash in pop bottles on the way there to afford the show.

Sure, Cheap Flicks was getting dilapidated. The flooring had seen better days, the seat padding was thinning and the big screens were battle-scarred. Really, whole place felt sticky. However, the outrageously low admission and snack prices helped me conform to budget, which, in turn, enhanced my willingness to overlook just about anything.

Had they fixed it up, the place might have lost its appeal to those on fixed incomes, from seniors, to single-parents, to young dating couples looking for an excuse to sit close in a darkened room. I preferred the bargain prices and shabby chic to the first-class flight seating and sky-high prices that are rapidly becoming the movie industry norm.

Cheap Flicks felt more like camping than a five-star hotel. I appreciated the simplicity of having only one flavor of popcorn salt and extra salt packets you could pocket and take with you into the movie to gradually add salt, rather than over-salting your popcorn on top and then unsuccessfully shaking the bejesus out of it to redistribute salt to the lower layers.

I loved that if I missed a first-run movie, which frequently happened, I could catch it a month later at Cheap Flicks. It was also fun to watch “coming attractions” for movies I had already seen, noting how much they differed from the preview. And, if a movie turned out to be a real stinker, I was out only three bucks.

We used to ask for Cheap Flick gift certificates at Christmas, thereby making this most economical of options an even sweeter deal. But that’s all gone now and I’m left with reclining theater seating that’s suitable for royalty, overwhelming surround sound systems, and mortgage-sized movie ticket prices. What will they think of next?!

Recently, following an unexpected infusion of cash, I went to a regular movie theater and took along one of my children. Okay, I just wanted someone to send for popcorn refills, because you never know the best time to make a popcorn or bathroom run.

When the pre-preview ads popped up before the movie, one of the products touted was a pharmaceutical solution to overactive bladders. But if the bladder drug’s list of side-effects sounded too prohibitive, it was suggested we instead get the new “RunPee” app.

What?! Just like it sounds: a special phone application that shows the best window(s) of time to leave the movie while you can, to get to the can. No kidding! I Googled that high-tech, high-alert app as soon as I got home (after using the bathroom, of course).

According to the RunPee.com website, a guy by the name of Dan, his mother and his sister watch newly-released movies and make notes of the 1-4 minute most leaveable intervals during current movies. They convert their findings into an application that can be accessed via SmartPhones. How smart is that?

I picture Dan from RunPee speaking to students at an elementary school career day. “Well boys and girls, I earn a living by watching movies. Not to enjoy them, but to figure out the best times when to step out and take a whiz.” Oh, Mr. Dan. I want to scout potty breaks, too, when I grow up!

What would happen if everyone in the theater had the RunPee app and all left for the bathroom at the suggested stated time to pee. “Stampeed!” I nearly peed my pants laughing at the thought! I’d better get the RunPee app for better bladder control.