MELTDOWN

 

If my parents had a cell phone or computer, I would have had to resign from teaching in order to have enough time to handle their technology problems in addition to their doctor visits.  I haven’t actually clocked the hours spent on the phone with the Comcast tech support team and AT&T customer service, but it is getting to be a full time job.

 Immediately after I purchased my fancy phone and used my passwords on my cell phone to set up email accounts, dialogue boxes on my computer haunted me every time I wanted to open my email. Each time I went on, demands greeted me insisting I retype my password.  Each evening, after dinner, as Hubby sat down to watch television, I called Comcast tech support to find out why the computer wasn’t remembering the passwords. Computers, unlike humans, shouldn’t have dementia. Every night, someone else got access to my computer, fidgeted around with settings, and declared the problem fixed.  One young man informed me that my Outlook email passwords were different from my Comcast. He informed me that I must go to both sites each time I change my password. Wonderful. I didn’t know they were two different sites.

I have two Comcast email addresses. I questioned each tech person if the fact they had the same password was the cause of the problem. I was assured it was not. Finally, one expert, who must have reached the last step in the help manual, changed the passwords for each account. Viola!  Bye, bye dialogue box. Hello to trying to keep track of which account has which password.

My joy was short-lived. I could no longer get email on my cell phone. Now I discovered that just like Comcast can operate my computer from far off lands, AT&T can get inside my Galaxy phone. Guess what they discovered...the email account wasn’t set up properly.  Could that have been the cause of the password problem on my computer’s email? To make matters more frustrating, my Facebook, Google and Yahoo passwords had to be changed within a short time period. I forget the reason why and not sure if the Gmail account is the same as Google.   

My meltdown occurred when Hubby’s phone would not take a charge. We had no choice but to drive 30 minutes north to the only AT&T service center in our county. To me, that’s like having one service center for all of Manhattan. Thankfully no lines, and once again joy was short lived. The tech dared ask my spouse for the password for HIS phone. He looked at me. Tears were in his eyes.

 He was passworded out. Cell phones don’t have a “forgot  your password” feature for cell phones.

I could go on with another 500 words to tell you about the next 48 hours of password horror until his phone was working again, but it ended with the two of us having a huge argument over something we never, ever fought about before—who’s in charge of remembering which passwords.  It seems he thought that along with cooking, ironing and cleaning, remembering his passwords should become my job.

And yes, our phones and computers are functioning now, and I think better than me.