{"id":8859,"date":"2015-04-09T01:40:49","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T01:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8859"},"modified":"2015-04-09T01:40:49","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T01:40:49","slug":"grading-smart-phone-proficiency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8859","title":{"rendered":"Grading smart phone proficiency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

One of my three part-time jobs enables me to do a lot of people-watching.<\/p>\n

So I do.<\/p>\n

What I have discovered watching customers at the car dealership where I work — as well as my colleagues in all departments — is the ubiquitous nature of smart phones. Everyone seems to have one. Heck, I even have one.<\/p>\n

Just yesterday, one of my colleagues said, “Hey, look over there. Two customers are on their smart phones, and so is their salesman. No one’s talking to each other.”<\/p>\n

Yep, that’s the way it is these days.<\/p>\n

I see sales representatives racing through the showroom chatting on their phone, or sending text messages to someone. Service department personnel? Same thing. Parts guys? Them, too. Our business department? Yes.<\/p>\n

Years ago I once proclaimed my goal in life to be the last person on Earth with a cell phone. After some time resisting the temptation, I finally decided to declare victory — and then I bought my first cellular telephone. I made a bit of noise about it publicly at the time. Some friends tried to say they’d never owned a cell phone; a family member said the same thing. My response? You cannot prove<\/em> it beyond a reasonable doubt. So my victory declaration stands.<\/p>\n

Here we are in 2015. I’ve upgraded to a smart phone. It’s got a lot of those gizmos one uses to do all kinds of things.<\/p>\n

As I watch people through the day using their smart phones, I am struck by the degree of proficiency they exhibit.<\/p>\n

I’ll call the experts the “one-handers.” These are the individuals who can send text messages with one hand, while holding the hand of a child in the other. They’re adept at using these devices. My fear is that they do so while driving a motor vehicle — but I won’t\u00a0go there.<\/p>\n

Me? I’m a two-handed guy. I haven’t yet mastered the dexterity it takes to do all these functions with just a single hand. I’ll speak for my wife and say that neither is she.<\/p>\n

I prefer my relative clumsiness with these devices. I don’t want anyone to think I am so smug that I can manipulate a smart phone with just a single hand.<\/p>\n

I’ll prefer to remember what\u00a0a young friend, who at the time was working as a barista in an Amarillo coffee shop, told me when I informed him I had just purchased my first cell phone. He said I reminded him of his grandfather, who would hold his cell phone up close to his face so he could read the numbers whenever he made a call.<\/p>\n

Yes, that’s me.<\/p>\n

I’ve already declared victory in my quest to be the last man on Earth with a cell phone. Will I ever ascend to “expert status” using my smart gadget?<\/p>\n

Never!<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my three part-time jobs enables me to do a lot of people-watching. So I do. What I have discovered watching customers at the car dealership where I work — as well as my colleagues in all departments — is the ubiquitous nature of smart phones. Everyone seems to have one. Heck, I even … Continue reading Grading smart phone proficiency<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[294,545,898,4289],"class_list":["post-8859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-coffee-shop","tag-barista","tag-cell-phones","tag-smart-phones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}