How to be Creative When Your Technology Fails to Work

There is really only one given that is absolutely true about modern technology and that is when it stops working — and it will stop working at some point or it is not modern technology — how do you get through the misery? And don’t start in about the starving kids in China or the refugee immigrants without cellphones; I know all about the raving lunatics 30,000 feet in the air who explode because they can’t get an internet connection 100% of the time. Stuff is meant not to work now and then. If it worked all of the time, you would call that magic.

It’s not what happens to you or how frustrating it seems when technology breaks, it’s how you deal with it. I know how a Sacramento REALTOR, for example, might feel about her brand new, fancy-schmancy iBox with bluetooth going on the blink. The thought could cross her mind that she is saddled with a piece of crap, not to mention a leased piece of crap, but she probably should not verbalize those words to the people who worked so incredibly hard to bring this piece of new technology to MetroList subscribers. Sometimes, Bluetooth technology does not work.

One has a choice in these situations. Unfortunately, one of those choices is now attached to a railing of a home in Land Park where it could possibly remain until hell freezes over, but on the other side of the coin, there is a point where one should find an alternative. One can stand there entering a code into her display key over and over, and get the same result (defined as insanity), which is the iBox is not reading the display key. It doesn’t read Bluetooth from a cellphone, either. One could leave all of those boxes in her car and just use her old lockboxes, her reliable infrared lockboxes and, in fact, such a lockbox is now nestled next to the big honkin’ fancy-schmancy iBox.

We also have to make decisions when, say, our Internet service goes wonky. Surewest is now something else, some alphabet letters, and it wasn’t working correctly this morning. I needed to turn my iPad into a hotspot and connect it to my laptop to write this blog. But it’s an alternative I have and when I need it, I absolutely need it. Plan B, can’t beat it.

I could be moaning and groaning and yelling at my ISP, but that is a self defeatist attitude. It irritates those who talk to me, and it can completely ruin my day, so I don’t do it. I just get on with my work. Well, I did call my ISP and put in a ticket request, and I did ask my Board to pick up the lifeless iBox but if none of that happens, life continues.

You agents, give some thought to how you might use those new fancy-schmancy iBoxes. You might not want to put one on a listing that is miles away from your immediate vicinity.