I suppose there’s a silver lining in here somewhere.

It’s my favorite to come home from vacation to this:

We don’t know what happened, Mama. There’s just a blue screen when we try to turn on the Mac. 

My favorite, really.

This was my second problem with an Apple product this week. The first was that my Apple ID was mysteriously disabled. So that’s fun.

It means that I can’t download anything, even though I have $100 in gift cards sitting in front of me and all I want to do is download this Free to Be You and Me song for my kids. I can’t update any of my apps, and I can’t even put tweetdeck on my new (Ahhhh The Silver Lining. There is it! I am now poor, and had to take money out of the replace-the-dying-minivan fund to pay for this shiny, new, albeit smaller thing. But. New Mac, nonetheless. AND Lightroom somehow transfered over without having to call and fight with Adobe. And I didn’t lose any of my photos, which was really the only thing I panicked about when I saw that stupid blue screen of death) iMac. Frustrating. And, here’s the kicker. I actually have to call someone to get this fixed.

Shouldn’t Apple, the company that is basically single-handedly responsible for creating people who like to do everything with their phones EXCEPT making actual phone calls, have a better eFIX solution available? I would happily fill out a “No I have absolutely no idea why YOU decided to disable my apple ID” form and wait for someone to just flip the switch and turn all my functionality back on. Instead, I get to spend the majority of my day being transfered from person to person to person to person, because, guess what, they have no clue what happened either.

Ahhh….customer service.

Seriously, though. I really, really hate using the phone.

See, there are four major practical problems with phone calls.

1. I know that 99 times out of a 100, I am calling someone at a bad time.

“Oh no! It’s totally not a bad time, I’m just snaking my toilet!” (This loosely translates to: I am up to eyeballs in shit and Ali wants to talk to me. Greeeeeat)

“Oh no! It’s not a bad time. I promise I wasn’t sleeping!” (TOTALLY SLEEPING.)

“Oh no! It’s not a bad time. Oh, and that’s not all of your friends you hear in the background. At a bar. Dancing. Without you!” (This loosely translates to “Yes. That is all of your friends you hear in the background. At a bar. Dancing. Without you.”)

“Oh no! It’s not a bad time. I’m just getting padded down at the airport. Oh wait…what? I’m not supposed to use my phone here. Whoa. I’m being escorted out of here and they are taking my phone a….” (This loosely translates to “I am an asshole who doesn’t like to miss calls so I answer my phone in completely inappropriate places and therefore I shouldn’t be surprised that the airport confiscates my phone.”

2. I can be smarter, funnier, more interesting, less bumbly, more professional, better when not speaking live. 

3. I am completely and totally physically incapable of ending a conversation of any type. I will just keep that shit going forever and ever because I can’t just be all, “Okay, well, then, I really do like you, but I am currently burning pasta (YES IT’S POSSIBLE TO DO) and I’m supposed to be running Mary Poppins lines with my daughter but I’m making a really lousy Mr. Banks while I’m talking to you about the difference between green tea and black tea. So I am going to hang up now.” I cannot. So I will just keep blabbering until you make the first move. And what if you, like I, can’t hang up either? We’ll be on the phone for the rest of our lives!!!!!

4. I panic when asked direct questions.

“Do you want to help me move 1,000 pieces of furniture on Sunday?” asked in a email. EASY. Oh, I’m so sorry I missed this email, Buddy, but I’ll totally help you move anything else you need moved next weekend?

“Do you want to help me move 1,000 pieces of furniture on Sunday?” asked on the phone. NOT EASY. “Of course! Totally! How can I say no to your lovely voice. Not only can I help you move furniture on Sunday, but I can totally inconvenience myself to be available on Monday too, in case we don’t finish on Sunday!

So, you can only imagine how well I do whilst talking to PR people and customer service people. “What’s your social security number?” “WHAT? Who is asking? I am totally living LEGALLY IN THIS COUNTRY. Stop asking me hard questions!”

See also: Real live customs agents.

So, what this really means is that I’ll never be able to update any of my apps again, will have to live with hootsuite, and I’m going to have to just sing that Free to Be You and Me song to my kids. It’s really the only way.