TECHNOPHILE TROUBLES !!
- 4/6/2012 <--Prev : Next-->
EDITORIAL
It was a tense technological moment and it stretched into a technophile nightmare !
The counter assistant at Econet, Ascot Branch was a true gentleman, he never once threw his toys out of the cot and shrieked at me !! Not even once !!
I could see his heart sink as I approached him, iphone proffered like a peace offering. How many other mentally and marginally challenged grand dames had he dealt with that day, with regard to mobile phones and their vagaries. ?
All I wanted was for him to show me how Ecocash worked. Mpesa ? Dahabshille? Textacash ?
You know the transfer of money from one mobile phone to another? I have after all seen it on the billboards, and it looks ever so simple, one person sitting at the office and the cash literally flies from one phone to another in the rural areas. Just how complicated could that be ?
Well trust me it is mighty complicated for someone who was born well before the Silicone Valley had even been geographically formed !
It's certainly not as simple as they make out. First of all the multitudinous forms and red tape took some dealing with, but I am used to that. It was when I had handed over my $250.00 and wanted to be sure it went to the right fellow that the trouble started.
Spectacles on - check - phone numbers clearly visible - check - it was all going well "star-151- star-200 hash" monotoned the counter assistant, looking slightly grey at the mammoth task he saw emerging before him.
HeeHoo normally takes control of all things technical but sadly I was on my own for this one.
It wasn't the fact that there was a giant and impatient queue growing behind me, it wasn't the fact that the specs were slipping off my nose with perspiration at the rigors I was undertaking, it was the fact that you are given a 90 second time limit to undertake all the many complicated steps knowing full well if one dallied even slightly, that one's hard earned cash might disappear into cyberspace !!
My fingers literally flew with utmost dexterity across the face of the mobile, (magnetic levitation had nothing on me) ! The counter assistant exhibited extreme moments of sufferance and a distinct sagging of the shoulders and his very constitution, but give him full marks, he never once lost it and broke my phone over my head in a justifiable fit of manic rage.
Eventually miraculously the money changed phones, it flew from the safety of my amazing smart phone to the sanctity of my employees phone in Binga ! Aaah I sighed, smirking slightly at my own brilliance, whoever said I was technically inept?
Heaping praise on the exhausted counter assistant, I smugly called 'my man in Binga", only to be told that he could not retrieve the money as the phone was registered in some unknown third party's name.
Shriek !!!!! I guess its back to that sweet little old reliable Carrier Pigeon once again.
