I have had two potential relationships fail due solely to faulty cell phone plans. Before you sign your life away for two years in order to get that spiffy new flip phone, heed my words of caution:
Faulty Plan Number 1: No Nationwide Calling
Last Spring, I went to Paris for a Real Estate Class and met up with this really cute girl from Pennsylvania. We met at this Canadian bar or something and just really hit off. My friends and her friends ended up at this cozy little After Bar where we drank wine all night and the two of us ended up roaming the streets of Paris til the wee hours of the morning. It was like something from a Robert Doisneau picture, I swear to God.
Talk about having an IN, right? Here’s how US Cellular messed it up. Shortly after I got back, I wanted to call her but I only had a Midwest plan and a bullshit one at that. I anticipated talking to her for a long time to catch up (not remembering much about her, tequila and wine don’t mix so well) so I borrowed my buddy’s phone with a nationwide plan to call her. However, she entered MY phone number in France, so, like myself, she probably did not answer a strange number with a fucked up area code.
Self destruction occurred when I tried to explain to her my shitty cell phone plan on her voicemail followed by a suggestion to call me back on my friend’s phone. That didn’t go QUITE the way I planned. Apparently, I learned absolutely NOTHING smooth to say from my stay in the most romantic city in the world. I guess nothing says affection more than wanting to spend 65 cents a minute to talk to a person.
Faulty Plan Number 2: Free Incoming Minutes
So that last girl was a long shot anyway, but this next girl was a little more closer to home. I met her in Milwaukee and she was pretty cute too.
The problem here was that I had free incoming minutes, a sparse amount of anytime minutes, and ZERO night and weekend minutes. When she called me it was fine but when I called her, every conversation started like this:
Ben: Hey, how was your day?
Girl: It was terrible, my dog died, my house burned down, I lost my job, my cat died from a totally unrelated incident to my dog dying, my…
Ben: Oh that sucks, but you know what else sucks? I’m using my limited anytime minutes when you have unlimited night and weekend minutes. Call me back, okay?
Girl: ummm sure. Omigod! My Hamster! It was just alive a minute ago…
Ben: Thanks, babe. Talk to you in a sec.
That got old really quickly. That or she was just too blown away by my amazing sensitivity to her feelings. In either case, whatever relationship we had disappeared like the signal bars on my Kyocera driving through a long tunnel.
Maybe the cause of all this is something more. Like the fact that chicks just hate it when you try to save money around them in general. Or that I’m just used to talking to my buddies on the phone, where we talk in clipped sentences and no conversation lasts more than 15 seconds. All I know it that it wasn’t anything I did at all and scapegoating my cell phone service provider for all my women woes is a hell of a lot easier than a timeout for personal introspection.
If that’s the case, I will be Cingular for a loooooooong time.
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