When it rains, it snows
Yesterday we lost a nine year old, my wife got locked out of her office, and T-Mobile went down for her phone so she couldn’t call anyone to let her in. Some of this happened while I had the entirety of my network down. In short, there was a failure to communicate. When it did come back up in her area it sounded like fake movie phone interference.
TL;DR – fails of yesterday
The lockout of course happened near the end of day when everyone had left, 30 minutes before a school event we both had to be at. The wandering off happened because the open house the teacher refused to let the kids into the 20-minute at most event (45 minutes) and shoved them into the hallway with zero supervision.
9yo had just wandered off at the school function into another room, told two or three other kids where she was going, all of them forgot she’d said anything. C’est la vie. Of course there was panic, and texts and attempt to call me as well which also failed to reach me 4 blocks away picking up pizzas for a Girl Scouts event being held in a few minutes.
Her call went straight to my voicemail this time. I don’t know exactly when the text messages arrived as I spent 18 minutes waiting to pick up three already made pizzas at a Dominoes and when I drove them back to the Girl Scout meeting and started reading them I was looking at the 9yo who had been located.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no trusting T-Mobile/Sprint (this is not the first time,) or the phones (S21 Ultra delivers texts and notifications when it wants to, which can be minutes later,) or her work’s Wi-Fi (couldn’t be connected to,) or that anyone will relay a message (the kids weren’t the only ones.)
In an era of unprecedented communication we’re at a point a 1990’s beeper feels like it was a more solid choice.
