Luddite soul searching
A high tech culture often doesn’t extend much grace.
I recently botched an interview even before I got there. Over email we had agreed to meet at 3pm, but when the employer sent me a calendar invite, she mixed up the time and sent the invite for 2pm.
Being somewhat new to this google calendar situation, I saw that the invite had greyed out my calendar for 2pm, but 3pm MDT was posted on top of the invite, which gave me enough confidence to believe that 3pm was still the meeting time. (Obviously also not very on top of time zones)
Upon boarding BART and perusing my email on my iPhone, I saw a new email from the employer asking where I was for my 2 o’clock interview. Confused, I replied that I was heading over and reminded her that our meeting was for 3pm.
I show up to the company site with the employer basically saying that I had dropped the ball because I should have noticed this mistake and informed her. I proceeded to say I’m sorry (because I’m Canadian and that’s what we do) and left feeling confused and somewhat frustrated at the heightened dependance we have on technology.
I’ve never been a no show, I’m well organized and prepared, and my planning is quite dead on. To have someone throw this all in my face because I was unable to read the google calendar correctly, made me somewhat disappointed with the whole technological culture of today.
Our reliance on these digital technologies to make plans, to communicate, to be efficient, can be detrimental to our relationships, because more often than not, we end up projecting expectations of how we use our technologies onto others.
And often in our expectations, there is no grace or understanding extended to a person who may use technology differently.
Yes I may be at fault, because I should have double checked the time when I was confused over the calendar invite. I own up to being somewhat of an idiot who can’t always figure out these new apps and calendars, but with these new and constant changes, will there be enough time to extend grace to the different preferences we have in the use of our digital technologies?
I hope so.