Battery failure or USER ERROR?
I found out the other day how much I depend on technology. Specifically my iPhone.
On Monday I was sent over to Fleet to cover as someone had called in sick. Normally I’d drive but on this particular occasion I decided that I’d take the train - didn’t particularly fancy attempting to go down the M3 for 30 miles during rush hour. The journey there was fine, apart from missing my connecting train which made me half an hour late.
Upon arriving in town I remembered that it was quite a distance from the station to the town centre so I used the Google mapping software on my phone to figure out how long it’d take to walk. 20 minutes. I got the company to pay for a taxi. Plus I wasn’t knackered. Happy Days.
The day went well, checked my Facebook, updated my Twitter, watched videos of people falling down trapdoors on YouTube. The usual, until it was time to go home. I downloaded some podcasts and texted my mum asking for a lift home from the train station, all the while marvelling at how well my phones battery was holding up - until I got onto the train and my battery died. It seemed that for some reason the battery indicator wasn’t displaying the actual life left in the phone.
I arrived at Walton station after THE MOST BORING JOURNEY EVER hoping that my ride would be there. It wasn’t.
Seeing as the station is 4 miles away from my house walking was out of the question, and I fucking hate buses. I figured I needed to find some way of calling my mum to see if she was picking me up so I thought I’d search for a payphone.
“Ah! I can find one on Google maps on my phone” I thought - Until I realised that seeing as I couldn’t make any calls with my phone, it was unlikely that I could use it to search for a payphone. Or bring up my mums number to call anyway. I couldn’t even check Ray Mears’ website to see what he would do. Essentially I was a bit fucked.
Anyway after ten minutes my lift turned up and everything was cool. But it really demonstrated how reliant I am on this one piece of technology and how wrong things can go if it packs up.
A normal person would say it wouldn’t have happened at all if the battery indicator had worked - however we all know that Apple stuff never goes wrong and in some bizarre way that I haven’t figured out yet the whole ordeal was entirely my fault.
