The Buzz at the Counter

A young fellow in a warehouse jacket sat at my counter last Thursday, nursing one coffee for an hour. He was not watching the tables. He was watching his phone, which buzzed on the Formica about every ten minutes, and each time he flinched like it had pinched him.

I asked if somebody needed him. He laughed, the tired kind. Nobody needs me, he said. It is just the app. It says there is a boost on tonight's game. Then it says the boost ends soon. Then it says a buddy of his just won something.

I told him I understood the buzz better than he figured. In my day the buzz was a fellow leaning in the doorway of a poolroom saying, there is a game going in the back, and you need a ride, and you better come now. Same voice. It always arrives right when you are tired, and it always says soon.

Here is the difference, and it is not a small one. That doorway fellow went home at night. He had a wife, or a bar tab, or a bad knee. The phone has no bad knee. It talks to you in line at the grocery, in the truck, in bed at two in the morning. Nobody built a door for it.

So I told him the only thing I know. A question that asks you again every ten minutes is not a question. It is a hook. And the cure for a hook is not a better argument with it. It is distance. Turn the buzzing off. Put the thing in a drawer, in the other room, in the glove box. Make yourself walk to it.

He looked at the phone a long while. Then he turned it face down. It buzzed anyway, and he let it.

If that buzz has your name on it more than you like, 1-800-MY-RESET has people who will talk it through with you.

Some doors are worth building yourself.

Sal