In the late fall, it was announced that our company would be providing each employee with a BlackBerry. I must admit, I was hesitant about the whole situation. Did I want to be on call 24/7/365? Was it really even necessary? What would I do with my current cell phone, carry both of them?
I got my BlackBerry a week before the start of our holiday break. Once I went through the training session, I pretty much just carried it around for use as a clock for the first several days. I read e-mails on it, but didn’t necessarily respond until I got back to my desk. I made one phone call just to see how it worked.
All that changed as soon as I went out of town on business. It was a single-day trip: fly out in the morning, meet in the afternoon, and fly back in the early evening. I hate traveling with a laptop, so I flew light with just the BlackBerry in my purse and a zippered folder full of paperwork.
It was kind of a last-minute trip, so I had some work projects to handle while I was traveling. As I sat in the airport in the morning, I found myself responding to some e-mails, typing with one thumb. That was pretty convenient.
After we landed, I checked my e-mail again and had my first BlackBerry-related accident: smacking the side of my head against the cab door as I got in. There was blood. Important lesson learned right away.
Once the meeting was over, I sat in the lobby and wrote some copy (in a notebook with a pen) and then typed it into the BlackBerry to e-mail it to a project manager. By then I was typing with two thumbs and getting really speedy about it. In less than a day, I’d turned into That Guy…the annoying BlackBerry user who gets so absorbed by an electronic device that the rest of the world fades away.
Fortunately, the addiction didn’t get its hooks into me completely. I don’t jump to check it every time the light flashes to tell me I have an e-mail. I certainly don’t pick it up in meetings and start tap, tap, tapping away. I think I am going to let my old cell phone go pretty soon, but only because it’s stupid to carry two mobile phones in my small purse.
It is kind of fun to have a piece of sleek, new technology to play with. Do you know of any cool BlackBerry functions that a novice user wouldn’t have figured out yet? If so, please share!
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