Snowed in…work goes on
Today there’s a snowstorm dumping loads of rather unwelcome White Christmas ambience all over Metro Detroit. Odds are the commute would be way more interesting and eventful than I’d like, so I’m working from home. Lots of people are. No big deal.
Well maybe it is a big deal. It makes me a little giddy because I’m old enough to revel in what we all now take for granted: cell phones, e-mail, even faxes and voice mail. It’s a huge deal, if you think about it.
Yes, Virginia, I actually remember a time when you would call a business and you knew they were closed because the phone just rang and rang. No voice mail. When I sold real estate in the early ‘80s, when we said we’d “run an offer over”, we actually did just that. No fax machines. If we were out with a client and they saw a house they wanted to see, we’d just swing by the local party store and use the pay phone in the parking lot to call the listing broker. No cell phones. (Historical note: Car phones were a luxury then – and they were installed in your car like your home phones were wired to the wall). If you needed to send a letter or data or whatever, you put a stamp on it. Photos had to be developed. No personal computers, no e-mail, no scanners, no data files, no flash drives, no social media – how did we ever get anything done or talk to anyone?
Back in the day, we used to go crazy trying to remember the words to a song or who was in that movie or how do you cook an artichoke or how do you write a press release. Now, in two minutes, we look up anything we like – 24/7/365.
I’m part of the last generation to grow up without home computers, cell phones and the rest of the magical array of communication tools we now take for granted. We’re the last to remember how cumbersome and awkward things were. I do not pine for “simpler times”. Everything is instant today – everyone is connected – and I love it.
Sure, times are hard, but in so many ways, we’re so lucky and so spoiled. I’m glad the snow made me remember that.
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