Mary: "Can I help you?"
Mr. Amarillo: "Can I borrow your yellow pages?"
Mary: "Um... We actually don't have one. In fact, I can't remember the last time we had it around."
Mr. Amarillo: "How do you look up phone numbers?"
Mary: "I just use the internet."
Mr. Amarillo: "Oh, one of you people. I'm not into those fads. Does one of the offices around here have one?"
Mary: "I don't know, but I'm happy to look something up for you. What do you need?"
Mr. Amarillo: "How do you know any number you find on there is correct? I only trust the yellow pages."
Mary: "I'm sorry, but we don't have one. Why don't you let me..."
Mr. Amarillo: "I'll just try another office. I'm not into this stuff."
" But Sir , the printers can print the number wrong " .
ReplyDeleteEvery year someone throws a phone book on my lawn. Every year I bring it inside, throw the old one out, and replace the old one with the new one. I never look at it. It sits on the shelf until the next year when I repeat the process. I'm not sure why the phone book gets thrown on my lawn every year. I never asked for it.
ReplyDeleteAlso interesting - the only people that use my landline are telemarketers and my mother. Everyone else calls my cell phone. My landline is unlisted and private....if I make a call from it, it shows up as 'private' unless I unblock it. Somehow my unlisted landline still shows up online.
I didn't realize my Dad was visiting Grumpyville.
ReplyDeleteDon't you know that when the whole telecommunications infrastructure fails, that your fancy "Internet" won't work at all. You will wish you had a phone book then funny man (even though your phone won't work anymore)
ReplyDeleteFun Fact for people who think the Internet is still a "fad", Phone companies translate your long distance phone call into digital packets and route them over the internet infrastructure to their destination now. So if you only make long distance phone calls, you use the Internet now too.
Plot Twist: The Yellow Pages get all the phone numbers from the internet.
ReplyDeleteLuddites are still lurking everywhere.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing so terrible about having a tinge of Ludditism.
DeleteDon, not necessarily. Some long distance is Voice Over IP, but not all.
ReplyDeleteI tried to find Ibee Grumpy in Grumpy ville in the online yellow pages and he wasn't listed.. Maybe he would shoe up in the printed version.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't think it was because autocorrect first tried to change Ibee into Obese!
We don't get them any more here.
ReplyDeleteYes, I look numbers up on the web. Yes too, if I suggest something like that to one of the ladies I swim with in the mornings, boy doesn't she get upset.
Telephone woes. and the yellow pages. Now, we get a copy of something that looks like a phone book, but it never has the number of whatever I want to look up, or if it does, I don't know where to find it. I toss out the old one and replace it with the most recent copy--but, you'd never know it because they don't write the year it is published on the cover anymore. All the phone books look brand new before they're discarded because no one uses it.
ReplyDeleteThere was a time when we actually used phone books, and those phone books were replaced less regularly, and actual notes and updates were handwritten in them, so that even if a new one was provided we didn't throw out the old because it had the most up-to-date information as well as the recipe for Aunt Maude's effervescent lemonjello marshmallow pineapple ecstasy salad.
Back when postage stamps cost less than 35 cents at one time, I tried to find out what the actual price was. (I had a bunch of smaller denominations and was attempting to use them before the penny stamps would cover the entire side of an envelope.) The local post office was not in the book, neither was the main office downtown, and I was referred to a federal listing with an automated answering service for which I couldn't get through. I asked the postmaster when we were out walking our dogs that evening if I should call his wife at home to get the number.
Another time I had to find out if my kid's school was closed (since I left for work long before anyone got up in the morning), and I looked specifically for the school name in the white pages, then the city government since its name included the city, then county listings since the child of a co-worker lived just down the road and her kids went to a county school, and found the number in the yellow pages under 'schools-academic'.
Funny, too, I can never find my favorite Campbell's California Clam Chowder, either, in the grocery store. As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever been in the canned soups aisle of any store where the names are in alphabetical order, or any order at all.
Have you noticed how the phone books are becoming smaller (not thinner) but the size of Reader's Digest magazines? For the kids, with their smaller derrieres it might be useful for booster seats at the Thanksgiving dinner, but that's it. Not for the short-legged little old ladies!
I have a phone book at home, one in my car, and one in my truck. I use them all the time. I feel good about myself.
ReplyDelete