My Little Train Wrecks and Technology

I’m pretty good with technology. Obviously you have to be to have a website of this caliber and sophistication. My five regular readers would certainly agree (who all wear very thick glasses). My clients, on the other hand, not so much. More often than not, I am providing tech support as well as house cleaning services.

Midge is certainly the worst. Everytime I’m over there she has been locked out of her Amazon account and does not know how to reset her password. Even though I have shown her 100 times and even written down the instructions, it seems she would rather me do it. Clever lady but I’m catching on to her. I do understand though because every time she touches a computer it implodes in a variety of errors. The last time she messed it up so bad I was on the phone with Amazon for an hour trying to set things right. So I wrote down the new password, saved it in her computer and ten minutes later she did it again. This time Amazon actually suggested she shop somewhere else. Score one for Midge.

She also wanted a cell phone after the fire so she could make calls while she was waiting on the cable company to set her service back up. So I picked her out a simple phone (I thought) and showed her how to use it. The next week when I came, she had 20 missed calls because she didn’t remember how to answer it. I guess swiping left is a big problem for the elderly, or is that swiping right? Now she’s confusing me.

Old Ironsides has actually really embraced technology, perhaps overly so. She got herself a Google Home and enjoys listening to oldies music on it. She also enjoys setting alarms and reminders so that every ten minutes some kind of alert is going off with Google shouting “Reminder: It’s time to take your medicine” or “Reminder: It’s time for lunch.” One of these days it’s going to remind her to stop using me. But she doesn’t know how to cancel them if she doesn’t need it anymore. She just makes another one cancelling the original out like so: “Reminder: Lunch with Gertrude.” Reminder: Gertrude passed.”

“Reminder: Stop using me.”

The Bachelor thinks he’s really good with technology and has what you might consider a smart house, with Google’s in every room and smart lights and locks. I’m waiting for him to program my chores: you have 15 minutes to clean the bathroom. If I took 20, will it implode?

But technology can get very overwhelming to manage and the chances of technical issues are always present. One time he changed light bulbs around without reprogramming them and now I have to ask Google to turn on the bathroom light to turn the kitchen light on and the porch light for the bedroom. Luckily he made me a nice chart. I did get to find out what happens when his technology runs amok. I had to make a late night emergency key delivery because he locked himself out of his apartment taking out the trash with nothing but his skivvies on. It was a site to behold, although not a good one. That certainly earned some Cleaning Lady points I tell you.

The Artist doesn’t embrace technology that much but has found downloadable cleaning schedules like the ones I make here. She has become obsessed and now when I go to her house I am bombarded with cleaning lists hanging all over the walls. I have little choice but to follow her two page “Deep Clean For 6 Hours” checklist choice of the week. I’m currently in search of one for “Great places to hide a computer.” I can’t say where I’d like to put it or this post would turn into something entirely different.

So while technology can certainly make our lives easier, it can also make it more difficult for The Cleaning Lady. If you choose to use it, be sure you know how to please.