LITTLE THUMB DANCERS

Living in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto, makes it necessary to take the subway downtown. Well, that is not always true, I can take the car! But given the 24 hour traffic congestion and the prohibitive cost of parking when I get there, I prefer to use public transportation. After all, as a retired octogenarian I do have some time to spare.  In all these years only once was I offered a seat in the Priority Seating Section on the subway car. Obviously, this goes to prove I don't look my age!

To pass the time in the days before devices, I would mentally compose a narrative of my fellow passengers: she's attending U of T ; he's a construction worker; that woman is a Nanny and so on.  Then I would attempt to create their life story judging by their facial expressions and behaviour. More interesting than trying to read a free tabloid on a jolting, crowded and rebounding train.

Priority Seating Anyone?

Today almost all of my fellow passengers are wearing ear-plugs and, while clutching their devices, their little thumbs dance across the surface. Crunched into a narrow seat does not allow me an extensive survey. But, not being offered a seat (because of my youthful appearance no doubt) standing allows me to peek over many more shoulders and see what tune the little thumbs are dancing to. The results of this scientific research is - they are mostly listening to music and playing video games.

Having observed this phenomena I decided it was time, once again, to upgrade our own collection of devices, especially our cell phones.With two cell phones and a land line at home our provider tells us we have a great package deal! But our cell phones are now 'long of tooth'. Of course a simple phone is all we need as long as I remember to take mine with me. Oh, but there are so many apps and extras on phones these days and, with our current 'contract' just about finished, we decided to look at upgrades. Having researched the different makes we finally settled on the Samsung Galaxy s5. If all those kids can afford it, why can't we?

So, one Saturday afternoon we drove to the nearest Mall and paid a visit to our providers store. The store idea was probably borrowed from Steve Jobs. We browsed through all the new and fancy phones on display.  I was looking for one where I could read the print without relying on a magnifying glass. Our inspection and handling of the various phones confirmed our original choice, the new Galaxy s5.

Naturally, we wanted to keep the cost contained in the 'wonderful plan' we currently have. We figured if the new phones were to cost a little more, we could cancel the land line and switch the home phone number to one of the cell phones. Was the agent helpful?  Not at all, he was not there to give advice and save us money, his job was to sell us new phones. I had prepared a paper plan that would upgrade our phones, and still keep costs in line with our current billings, but he would not even look at my document even though we were the only customers in the store at the time.

We went home empty handed. I decided not to give up and called the providers help line. I really wanted someone that would go over our plan and help us figure out how we could move to new phones and still remain within our wonderful 'package deal'. The person on the phone was of little or no help. In fact, she kept telling me how wonderful Fiber T.V. would be on my new phone. Watch TV on an 8 inch screen? I don't think so! At least on the TV set  I can mute out the ads. 

Heartbleed Bug

We still have a land line and two ancient cell phones that were not threatened at all by the Heartbleed Bug! (As I was writing this the mailman just dumped 18 pages in our mail box outlining a Mobility Critical Information sheets and Agreement package!)

Given the infiltration and abundance of ads now appearing on all of our devices, even though we are already paying for the service, I think many of us have reached the saturation point. I spend half my time hitting the little "X" in the upper right hand corner of the damn pop ups!

In Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis (the hero in the book is a Canadian by the way) referring to banks says, "If people who make the most money for the banks are the ones who rise up the ranks, your rewarding behaviour that isn't necessarily in the best interest of the firm."

As a society we need to re-learn that the 'customer' is important and not only a target to generate income for the business and advancement for the staff. A little more humanity would go a long way in enhancing the future of so many companies because when alternatives do appear, they had better watch out! Meantime, keep those little thumbs dancing.

And that's Dick's View of the World this Week