I plead forgiveness for my latest social media rage – you might not have been affected, but you might relate to the story behind it.
When I do interviews, I record them using my smartphone’s voice recorder. I take fan photos on my phone and follow them with professional media pictures on the camera afforded to me by the publication. Besides having a contact book containing all my important source information, I have a backup of the most necessary ones on my smartphone. The music I listen to before interviewing bands are stored on it. The stories we write, whether mine or the others, are tweeted by making use of a twitter app on the device. Chat applications serve as vital to my team, through which we communicate new tip-offs and keep track of our colleagues’ whereabouts in the journalistic sense of the word.
Colour me disappointed when I realised that my device, my dear, sweet journalistic tool, is faulty.
Colour me annoyed as it switches off during important phone calls where necessary information is shared.
Colour me “unprofessional” when certain residents can’t reach me due to the phone’s faults.
Colour me helpless when all those interview voice clips, the ones I have taken so much time to document in order to write the best reflection of my experience with an individual, get corrupted because of faulty hardware.
Colour me stunned that the relevant service provider seems not to realise the need for a journalist’s cellphone to be running smoothly, assisting this Astertjie in her everyday tasks.
#firstworldproblems ?
#lifeofajournalist :(
#unnecessaryevils (-_-)
#smh
My social media accounts are just buzzing with my frustration, and it might actually result in some rêrige-êrige customer service (hopefully).
I am still coming to terms with how absolutely reliant I have become on technology to perform optimally, but I’ll never come to terms with the South African attitude towards service delivery.
We’re all at the end of our ropes when it comes to billing issues, repairs issues, replacement arguments, pricing problems and irregularities in what is promised and what is delivered.
When last did you really make a noise about the lack of it?
