When technology gets the better of you

When Technology gets the better of you

I had a very odd experience this week involving a customer, cell phone and a toilet, not usally three things you should be mixing together!

It was around 8pm in the evening and I was preparing for a critical customer presentation at 8.30am the next morning.  I had not heard from a key contact (we'll call him Bob Smith)  at that customer during the day, despite following up a few times about our exact meeting venue prior to the big meeting, I had not heard back.

In typical style, I decided to respect Bob's evening privacy and simply send a text rather than phoning him to confirm.  The text was sent and I started sorting myself out to leave the office for the evening.  Armed with laptop, handbag and cellphone in bag, I headed off to the ladies on my way out the door.

Darn... the light-bulb had blown in the toilet (I had realized this before I went to Thailand but as the only female in the office working after dark, I'm usually the only person impacted).  As the landlord, it was utilmately my responsiblity to sort it out.  Oh well, another thing to sort out tomorrow. 

So sitting in the dark, I heard a voice from my handbag- thats right... I'd decided to be clever during my holiday as I was worried I might miss important updates from the office at work on my holiday as I was not glued to my phone as usual, so I had chosen to activate a feature that is voice driven when a text message comes in, which reads out the text to you and then you can respond by voice.

I'd been showing off to my 'iphone loving' husband with this feature that he did not have (as I have a windows phone), all holiday, sitting smug as I was shopping, having my phone read my texts to me.  Oh how clever I was!

So now that I'm sitting on the toilet in the dark, with my handbag somewhere on the floor in front of me, I hear somewhere in the general direction....

"Message from Bob Smith, you can say read it or ignore".  Of course its just too tempting, its late, and no one else is around, and how cool and hygenic, I can have my phone read my texts in the little room!  I was smiling to myself at this extra bit of productivity I was squeezing out of the day by multi-tasking on the loo,  so I said.... "Read it".  What I did not realize is a muffled kiwi voice, apparently sounds like quite a different computer generated American voice.  I waited...heard nothing and then heard, "Calling Bob Smith......"

OMG- I am now calling a major customer, on speaker phone from the toilet in the dark. 

PANIC.

I am floundering around dragging my handbag to me as fast as I can trying to look inside "the tardis" as my husband calls it, to find the said offending phone.  My heart is racing and I finally grab and push the end button immediately.  Phew, saved.

I finish my business in the dark, wash hands and depart from the ladies.  I have literally just left the room and my phone rings. I check the screen.  OMG its Bob Smith, he heard things he should not have, I'm sure of it.  Maybe I didn't cancel the call in time. 

PANIC!
Should I answer?

I Answer.

"Hello Bob" (I am so pleased I do not have a video phone- he would see that I'm actually purple, not even a shade of red at the moment)!

He was as repsonsive as normal with no clue about the past events and simply confirmed where we'd meet and that he may get held up by traffic so could be a little late.

After our normal conversation I hung up, no quite so embarassed as I could have been.

The next morning before the presentation, I had to go to the ladies before we started.  Bob was in the room and I must admit I am sure I saw him with an odd expression on his face.  Perhaps he did know?  I don't think I'll even know.

The moral of this story is that don't ever think you are smart enough to out smart your technology, when things go wrong, yes, they can go very wrong!  And don't ever think you can get away with interacting with your technology in the loo!