Conspiracy Theorist

When my boss was telling me about the neighborhood roustabouts who must be attempting to break into his garage, I immediately zoned out. "Here we go," I thought. Another harebrained mental concoction that he'd cooked up to explain the stripped threads in the garage door motor of his condo. He reasoned that he'd purchased the thing just 18 months ago, and he only uses it a few times a week. Someone must have tried to break in. The threads must have warped when they put the pry bar under the door and pulled up so hard. They were going to rifle through the office, look at our maps, and pilfer our top secret oil info. We'd have to take action. The door into the house from the garage would remained locked at all times. All employees at JLOCO were to be armed with semiautomatic pistols capable of sending a most mortal of message. These teens must be stopped.

I had a nice chuckle, and figured that a faulty piece of plastic was driving my boss to paranoid lengths. These things happen, and sometimes shit just breaks. He sure has crazy ideas, that boss of mine. I'd never come up with those outlandish conspiracy theories, would I?

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: the cell phone companies are out to get us. More importantly, they're out to get our money. I'm not talking about the dollar after dollar they make you cough up to text your new late night hook up. Sexting, the kids call it. No problem with that here on Abaluba. I've got issue with the exorbitant overage fees they charge the user if you spend a little extra time checking up on your friends and family. Bastards. They're quietly stealing minutes and that adds up to big dollars. They take 'em, and we don't even notice.

We're all accustomed to voice mail. Miss a call, and that little yellow envelope shows up on your phone letting you know that a message awaits. In my case, no one wants to talk to me, so everyone I call avoids that green button. Straight to voice mail. What do I hear? Their message, of course...

"Hello, this is Jim. Sorry I missed your call, but please leave me a message and I'll call you back. BEEP."

At least, that's how it used to be. These days, things have gotten a little more protracted.

Jim: "Hello, this is Jim. Sorry I missed your call, but please leave me a message and I'll call you back."
Automated semi-female voice: "At the sound of the tone, please leave your message. At the end of your message, press one, or hang up."

Really? Did I need to hear that prompt? Of course not. Because, as I said earlier in this post, we're all familiar with voice mail. As far as I can tell, it's been basically the same service since it was invented. But those devious board rooms at Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and all the rest have all come to the same conclusion: death by a thousand cuts. Or, more accurately, increased revenue by a collection of seconds. Allow me to explain.

As you make a call, it's tracked by the minute against your allowance for the month. Each incremental call or conversation means relatively little, at least until they are weighed as a whole. If you talk for fifty seven seconds, it counts as one minute. If you talk for one minute and four seconds, it counts as two minutes. Sure it's only one minute difference, but if it happens enough, you may end up going over in your allowance, and run into those costly overage charges. Read Jim's voice message again, preferably out loud. How long did it take for the automated voice's part? All I'm saying is that there are stolen seconds of a call that might count as minutes down the road, and that might cost you big time.

Lately, it's gotten even worse. I keep getting interrupted when I'm leaving a message. A voice will barge in and cut me off, asking if I'm satisfied with my message. I get a list of choices. I can press one if I'd like to erase and re-record, press two to listen to my message, press three for Spanish, or press four to continue. Would I like to continue? Isn't that kind of like waking someone up out of a dead sleep and asking if they'd like a nap? Jesus.

By the time all that interruption is finished, I'm usually so frazzled that I leave a longer than necessary message talking about how I hate the fact that someone just cut me off. I lose my train of thought, and hit a 10 on the fluster-meter.

All of that adds up to a good 45 seconds, and that does make a difference. I hate to mold myself into a spitting image of my boss, but I think someone has been up to no good behind the cell phone scenes. And I'm pretty sure someone has been trying to break into my apartment through the vent system in the ceiling.