tragic flaw number 57

[eirias]

No exciting person is without flaws, right?

My SO is trying to convince me that we should get cell phones. We have discussed it numerous times and I fear I won't be able to stave it off much longer.

It's not that I'm opposed to the devices in general; when I've lived abroad I've had them (still have my GSM hardware from the last trip, actually) and found them extremely useful. In Finland there's not really another option, as the country is basically not wired for land lines and if you want one you have to pay the phone company to physically put it there. So I am not the Luddite sort of cell phone abstainer, the kind who doesn't want to be reached at any time that is not convenient to me. I like being reached, in general. I am also not (terribly) afraid of brain cancer.

No; the issue here is that, in some circumstances, I am cheap as hell. Specifically, the paranoid, competitive part of me that is the closest our social instincts come to reptile brains -- that part is cheap as hell. It's the part of me that, when playing the ultimatum game, wants to reject any offer that's less than 50%. When I read the various plans offered by cell phone providers, this bit of me just starts a giant caterwaul. THAT'S TOO MUCH MONEY! it says. TEN CENTS FOR AN SMS? OUTRAGEOUS! I know, I say, but... THAT'S TWICE AS MUCH AS YOU PAID OVERSEAS! AND FOR WHAT?? HOW CAN YOU EVEN THINK OF SPENDING SO MUCH MONEY ON FRIVOLITIES?! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LITTLE YOU MAKE?!

By this point the rational part of me that realizes I am (A) part of a family that makes more than I do and (B) essentially powerless in this situation and so I might as well give up and fork over the cash has tuned out and wants to go back to reading LiveJournal. Or maybe even doing work. Anything but reading about cell phone plans.

Comments

[ksledgemoore.livejournal.com]

I find that a lot of aspects of cell phones/cell phone company services are rip-offs. However, simply having a cell phone, I think, is cheaper than relying on a land line for your phone calls. Now, I suppose I could schedule in my friends and family to call me on my land line (requiring that I be at home and not able to move around too much in the house) so that they would pay for all of the long distance calls, but cell phones are more convenient because I can do my cleaning while on the phone, I can talk on the phone while I'm out such as on my walking commute (though I try to avoid using it too much in public places where other people will be annoyed), etc. On the weekends and in the evenings all minutes are free, and between people of my same company they are free. The only part that annoys me is that we can't opt for fewer minutes at a cheaper rate because we're already on the cheapest version (700 for the two of us to share, I think).

But yeah, given that nearly all of our people live far away and phoning is the best method of communication, I'm glad we have the phones. It's also convenient when we need to contact each other during the day or at other times, though that part of it is sort of a luxury that we could perhaps do without.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Yeah; I know that the math works out re: cell phones vs land lines for some people, but not for us. First, we've got a family of 2, so we're choosing between paying for 1 phone plan or 2, essentially. Second, the land line plan we have is pretty good (due to some serious strangeness with some calls I made to Anchorage, I think they kind of tried to buy us out of complaining to the FCC or something by giving us their "Select" plan for free, which means oodles of free long distance minutes each month). Plus neither of us is keen on the whole "911 can't find you" aspect of cell phones (not always a feature, but enough to be worrisome, last I heard). So I don't think abandoning the land line is a sensible alternative for us at this point.

Oh and I don't care about people who are annoyed by cell phone use in public -- I think the same etiquette should apply to those conversations as applies to in-person conversations in public (watch your volume, try not to talk about anything TOO lurid). I think cell phones came of age over here while I was "over there," and so I just got used to everyone always being on the phone. It's normal to me.

[ksledgemoore.livejournal.com]

Well, I do see what you mean about the financial aspects...in spite of me saying it's cheaper to do it with cell phones, we would prefer to be a bigger "family" for it to work (we're also just doing 2 people -- maybe we should latch on to one set of our parents) and as it turns out we have a land line in addition anyway, so it's just an extra expense. The land line is very expensive, too, because there was only one option. We got it in order to do the internet, because it was either that or cable and we don't have a tv.

I guess if I got long distance through my land line then I wouldn't want a cell phone, either! My husband and I are even considering switching to one shared phone...but I think that might be dumb because the people we call the most are each other.