It came last night.
After years of refusing to take the company up on its “generous” offer to cancel Blackberry service in exchange for a modest monthly contribution towards the service charges for a personal smartphone on which one loads the company e-mail, they finally announced that they are discontinuing Blackberries at the end of the year. The official e-mail stated that they’ll pay for an alternate device for employees who travel internationally, but I pushed back and got manager approval for a replacement device — that is, the iPhone — even though I didn’t meet the criteria.
So I set the thing up last night — well, the basics, anyhow — and I thought I’d be all excited about it, but I wasn’t.
And here are my whiny complaints:
1. No keyboard. Sure, there’s that youtube video where Steve Jobs boasts the superiority of the on-demand touchscreen “key” pad, but as it is, I don’t like to type with the family iPad, so it’ll take quite some getting used to, to use the iPhone for typing.
2. No case. Oh, sure, I can go out and buy a case for the phone, but in the meantime, it looks so fragile. And the aforementioned family iPad was dropped on a tile floor once, and now has electrical tape covering up the cracks on the edges. Given that the new company program isn’t a biennial upgrade like a traditional personal phone contract, but intended to be a one-time deal, I do want this to last.
3. No belt clip. Yeah, I know, I’m being whiny. But do I really have to carry the phone around in my pocket or in a purse all the time? And if I get a case for it, it won’t really even fit in my pocket, either.
4. The charger for my blackberry is plugged into the outlet behind the couch in the home office, and I’ll have to move the couch to unplug it, and come up with a good spot for charging the iPhone. I’ll probably have to go buy an extension cord for that outlet. Yeah, I know, more whining.
5. I admit, I have a certain sentimental attachment to the Blackberry. I got it when I first started working from home more than just sporadically, and requested it specifically to be able to make international calls from home, rather than for the e-mail element, even though at the time, I wasn’t considered automatically eligible otherwise. And in the meantime, for all that it’s now quite behind the times in its capacities as a smartphone, it made me feel like I had moved up in the world, and was able to meet that Anne-Marie Slaughter ideal of a part-time, flex-schedule remote worker who’s still able to respond to clients and colleagues, when I responded to an e-mail in the middle of the grocery store or at a soccer game. (OK, fine, the kids only played house league soccer for one or two years each, but still.)
Now? Everyone has an iPhone. So much for feeling special.
And the iPhone is great, and has a lot of capabilities that the Blackberry didn’t, but now I’m stuck in a certain (overly?-)scrupulous mode. I had never gotten an iPhone before; in fact, prior to the Blackberry, my cell phone was a cheap, by-the-minute version because I just don’t make that many calls away from home — and lacking the capabilities of an iPhone was perhaps a nuisance when everyone else in the band practice pickup line was likely playing games on their phones, but the (admittedly very slow) internet capacities of the Blackberry were mostly sufficient for the occasional looking-up of information away from home. But if my stated intention in getting the phone is to be able to make work-related calls and receive work-related e-mails, to what extent am I ethically obliged to minimize my personal use of the device?
Here endeth the whine.
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