Marisa Sung’s Rules of Etiquette for the Modern World Number 30

Senior citizens and technology make strange bedfellows! My mom is 80 years old and she is always calling me to report things like the fact that her mobile voicemail is “not behaving and is doing things against her will.” That account appears to have a mind of its own! She reports on scenarios that I never dreamed possible and/or ever heard of and claims that she is not “being let in” to her email account. It is as if the “little elves” at gmail are all conspiring against her to lock her out of her personal email account. Even scarier is the fact that she is on facebook! I can’t even imagine the shenanigans that go on with that account! People of her generation get very frustrated and upset when they hit a bump along the road and do not have an actual person available to hold their hand and help them through it. I have been hearing these same stories for over 10 years now and I am still telling her the same exact steps on how to retrieve her voicemail messages. You have to be very patient with them. I have to curb myself against making up funny stories like telling her that there is an “adjustment bureau” that is out to get her and policing her accounts due to content on the site. They monitor her every move and decided that she is a risk! I said that she is on it because she complains about the food at restaurants and asks for pickles and extra napkins too much so someone reported her! LOL I try not to pull the practical jokes because a lot of people don’t like it. I’ll never forget how I told my ex fiancé that the Fed moved while he was working at First Boston. He said “I gotta hop and call the Fed” again before I could finish my sentence and I was a little annoyed so I said “you are aware that the Fed moved, aren’t you??” He went crazy all day trying to get the new address and location. (That was before the days of the internet!) He finally called and said, very funny. I called all over the place and was asking all of my colleagues for the new address of the Fed. As a result, they starting trying to get the new address. 🙂

The Adjustment Bureau aka Facebook and Linkedin