I guess it will be a sign of old age soon, behaving like this. You’re sat there, chatting away on Skype. But you keep watching that damn elapsed call time clock running. And there’s this little anxiety in the back of your mind that this call is going on a long time … and we’ve just left it running while one of us goes to the loo … and keeps running while I take a cell phone call … and we haven’t said much in the last few minutes, have we?
I think “metered communications anxiety disorder” might become the defining way of discerning us Gen-Xs and older. My parents still have trouble making transatlantic idle talk — “surely this call must be costing you a lot?” I’m still stuck on “surely this call must be costing me something?”. No it isn’t.
Daughter, when I were a lad, we had to pay for every call and message. And she won’t believe me…
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Well put! I was trying to explain to a European friend why Americans don't text (SMS). She used SMS as cost avoidance - an SMS was the equivalent of about a penny, versus 10 or 20 cents for a quick phone call. "Well, I get 6 hours peak time, and unlimited nights and weekends, so in essence a two or three minute call is free. On the other hand, if I send an SMS message, I pay 10 cents..."
Posted by: at December 11, 2003 12:35 PMMy trouble'n'strife used to go through "end of the month minute bucket anxiety" until we switched to Cingular's Rollover Minutes.
The problem would start about the 20th of the month when I would calls saying "You only have 100 minutes left this month. Please stop making calls before 9pm".
However, there were other months when I wasn't traveling so much and I wouldn't use all my minute bucket. Now I accumulate "bucket credit" and the reserve is big enough that the anxiety has gone away.
And all of this caused because a telco I know well made it too easy to check the minutes used on their website. Sigh!
David
Posted by: at December 13, 2003 12:05 AM