It is no big secret. I work in the mobile phone industry and do a lot of work as a technician. I work on mobile phones all day long and make them work again. A very big part of my job revolves around troubleshooting and righting what once went wrong in a cellular device. Troubleshooting in and of itself is like detective work. A physician will do the same things in the same manner. We all view a list of circumstances and make an educated guess as to why or what the root cause of the problem is.

A good portion of my job focuses on common sense. Now, it isn’t always the user’s fault. A very large portion of society… A VERY LARGE PORTION of society does not take the time to understand their mobile device. Joe Sixpack and Susie Simpleton are very angry people and just want what they want their stuff to do the things they want it to do. Text messaging. Picture messaging and sometimes even phone calls. And when they can’t do those simple things, they don’t bother to take the time to do a few simple steps of troubleshooting on their own. They simply reach out and attack at the source. Obviously, it’s the people that sold you the phone… Not the manufacturer (yes, LG, I am talking to you) Those people make up 95% of the people I see on a daily basis.

There is a blatant lack of common sense in any profession when dealing with the American public and being a cell phone doctor is no different. So many times I see phones that have such simple solutions that people leave feeling really stupid. It’s not their fault. The American public has been hand fed solutions for so long that so many of them don’t know how to handle their own problems. Too many people coddled by single moms? Perhaps. It never ceases to amaze me how little people pay attention to the details that take up so much a part of their daily lives.

In front of you is your cell phone. You might even be reading this from your phone right now. Do you really pay attention to it? What happens if the screen goes blank? It amazes me how often I see issues that can be solved by a simple battery pull… Or even this… It’s a slightly complex issue. There’s an icon or something on your screen and you have no idea what it is. What would you do? Would you run to the store and scream the people behind the counter because your text messaging isn’t working?

Google.

That is the answer. My first rule of business is: when in doubt, pull the battery out. The second rule of troubleshooting: google it. You aren’t the first person this has happened to. Believe me. If you have had an issue with your phone, someone else has had it first.

I see a lot of different issues on a lot of different days. And each and every day I am able to do my job with a smile. And why? How? It’s simple. People are stupid. They leave stupid things on their phones. I know more about people’s personal and private lives because they hand me their issues and don’t bother to hide their privacy before handing me a phone. I see more in one day’s worth of work than a confessional priest sees in a year, that could ruin lives, shatter careers and bring families to their knees. I know things. Sure, these people are strangers, all of them… But I get to know things without even searching for them. I am handed these things because people don’t take care of their business before handing their device to a stranger.

Yes. There are privacy laws and we operate by very strict privacy guidelines. There is a tremendous amount of trust placed in us with personal and private sensitive information. There are seminars and all sorts of training materials that guide us into protecting private information, because if you think about it, we have access to every phone number in the united states.

I want to preface these examples of the shit I have seen with this:

I do not actively seek out this stuff. These are the kind of things that are handed to me on a daily basis for either my enjoyment or disgust. Some of these things cannot be unseen. Some of them you would think might trigger the “perv switch”. Sirius/Xm radio hosts Opie an Anthony often talk about items that pop up in the news where men come across a woman or an in stance they simply cannot resist and that perv switch inside them flips and they abandon all reason and hope for their lives and go balls deep into trouble. For example, a dentist who sees a loose blouse on a woman under the gas… And he fondles her or does whatever whatever else he can get away with.

The perv switch. I have seen some things that make that urge go… Oh, I NEED THAT PHOTO… But doing so would completely put my career and livelihood and well, freedom in jeopardy. It doesn’t take long. Common sense kicks in and denies that urge.

I cannot tell you how many bikini clad girls… And boys I have seen simply by looking at the wallpaper on their phone when they hand it to me. On any given day, I can expect to see breasts, nipples, pussy, bellybuttons, lots and lots of pink parts, penises, asses, shit filled toilets, dead animals, oh, you name it. I have seen it on a phone.

The flips side of all that juice is the nasty shit that ones eyes cannot unsee. Early on in my career, a woman came to me who was having issues with her picture messaging. This woman was a stout woman a few years older than me. She was a normal gal. A little pudgy and a little worse for wear like all of us non glamourous people. She handed me a phone.

So, dear reader… If you were to troubleshoot this issue of pictures not being sent, what would you do?

Correct. You would first try to send a picture.

I opened up the messaging and clicked the little spot to forward a picture. The stored pictures folder instantly opened up on the phone. To my surprise was a 350 pound naked man laying on a faux leather couch. Not only was he naked, but he was spread eagle and tugging on a very not large penis. A fully erect stub was peeking out from behind the folds of fat and dripping through his sausage fingers.

How does one un-see something like that?

Yesterday, this issue reared it’s ugly head in a manner I was truly unprepared for. I was actually embarrassed for the first time in this position. After all is said and done, bikinis rule and the photos of tramp stamps and teenage ass is wonderful, but when you stare down the face of someone in this situation… Well, it makes it difficult to manage internally.

A woman brought a device in because her phone kept dropping it’s Internet signal. After a few minutes of browsing, it would just stop. How do we troubleshoot? Why, let’s go browsing! I pull up the Internet browser. I type in yahoo.com and it comes up perfectly nice and easy. No issues. I browse a news story. It comes right up. Ok. Let’s keep surfing. I type in google.com and the ever so colorful logo populates instantly. I click on the search box there at señor google.

Now, some of you may or may not realize that google often times will remember your search history for your convenience so you can quickly pull something back up that you have searched for in the past.

This exact thing happened to me.

As I tapped the search box, the search history immediately appeared on the screen, with the words “why do I get a yeast infection every time I have sex?”

I looked up at the cute blonde in front of me with a red face and a look of confusion and perplexity.

And looking back now, I smile. Yes. It was funny, but you know what? She had a problem and she googled the answer.

I hope she got what she was looking for. If not, I would be more than willing to help her test out the theories and answers.