They’re loud, persistent, disembodied voices emanating from the inanimate, and it’s creeping me out.
You may recall an earlier column recounting my family’s late-night, or should I say early-morning encounter with our talking smoke and carbon monoxide detector last summer.
As if the eight screeching alarms wailing in unison were not alarming enough at 3 a.m., one detector’s insistent female voice declaring “Fire! Fire!” over and over, alternating with cries of “Danger! Carbon monoxide!” made the experience all the more unnerving. We know now how to shut her up (fresh batteries and a some light dusting) and she has remained mercifully mute from her spot on the basement ceiling at the bottom of the stairs for several months.
But she’s not the only one talking out of turn.
One Wacky Wednesday this fall I decided to treat my new car to a half-price car wash. The deal was so good I decided to upgrade from the deluxe to the premium wash, just this once. As I pulled my crossover alongside the pay station in front of the car wash — it’s sort of like a short ATM machine except it doesn’t give you money and IT TALKS! — I was met with my first challenge.
Despite the instructions delivered by the lady’s voice inside the machine, I struggled to properly slide my credit card through the slot in front.
“Please insert credit card into the reader below,” she said.
I gave it a whirl, but it didn’t take.
“Insert card face up as shown,” she instructed further.
I looked at the picture of the credit card on the front of the machine, flipped my card around and tried again.
No dice.
“Insert fully into the slot, then with a swift motion, remove your card.”
I was sure I could detect a level of frustration in her voice, and fired back defensively, “I inserted it fully, face up as shown, damn it.”
“This transaction has been canceled,” she replied.
With those five words, I felt a wave of emotions — shame, for being too stupid to figure out how to insert my credit card into the machine, frustration at the time I was wasting NOT getting my car washed, and humiliation for picking a fight with the lady inside the machine — and losing.
I’ve been hearing voices lately.
And they’re not inside my head.
They’re loud, persistent, disembodied voices emanating from the inanimate, and it’s creeping me out.
You may recall an earlier column recounting my family’s late-night, or should I say early-morning encounter with our talking smoke and carbon monoxide detector last summer.
As if the eight screeching alarms wailing in unison were not alarming enough at 3 a.m., one detector’s insistent female voice declaring “Fire! Fire!” over and over, alternating with cries of “Danger! Carbon monoxide!” made the experience all the more unnerving. We know now how to shut her up (fresh batteries and a some light dusting) and she has remained mercifully mute from her spot on the basement ceiling at the bottom of the stairs for several months.
But she’s not the only one talking out of turn.
One Wacky Wednesday this fall I decided to treat my new car to a half-price car wash. The deal was so good I decided to upgrade from the deluxe to the premium wash, just this once. As I pulled my crossover alongside the pay station in front of the car wash — it’s sort of like a short ATM machine except it doesn’t give you money and IT TALKS! — I was met with my first challenge.
Despite the instructions delivered by the lady’s voice inside the machine, I struggled to properly slide my credit card through the slot in front.
“Please insert credit card into the reader below,” she said.
I gave it a whirl, but it didn’t take.
“Insert card face up as shown,” she instructed further.
I looked at the picture of the credit card on the front of the machine, flipped my card around and tried again.
No dice.
“Insert fully into the slot, then with a swift motion, remove your card.”
I was sure I could detect a level of frustration in her voice, and fired back defensively, “I inserted it fully, face up as shown, damn it.”
“This transaction has been canceled,” she replied.
With those five words, I felt a wave of emotions — shame, for being too stupid to figure out how to insert my credit card into the machine, frustration at the time I was wasting NOT getting my car washed, and humiliation for picking a fight with the lady inside the machine — and losing.
I would have thrown the car in reverse and pulled away in my dirty car, tail between legs, if two other cars hadn’t pulled in behind me awaiting their turn at the car wash and blocking my escape. It was too late to get off this ride.
I had to regroup, quickly. The added pressure of impatient car wash customers in my rear view mirror provided focus. I jammed the card into the machine and was actually happy to hear the lady say, “Please select your wash package,” followed by “Please take your receipt.”
I tugged the slip from the slot and turned away from the machine, turning my attention to the white SUV ahead of me in the wash.
I figured our conversation was done.
I was wrong.
“The spot free rinse is now being applied to the vehicle in the wash” she suddenly said, again catching me off guard. “This special low mineral rinse water removes deposits that spot the vehicle after it dries,” she added.
She went on to describe each treatment in the car wash cycle in such graphic detail that I found myself uneasy again. It would be better not to know what’s coming, I thought.
“The high performance dryer is blowing the water off the vehicle in the wash,” she matter-of-factly explained. “This system pushes air at 150 miles per hour to dry the vehicle.”
150 mph?! That’s a Category 5 hurricane! Let me off this ride.
“The wash is available. Please enter wash now,” she said.
I survived the wash, but the voices haven’t stopped.
On a busy Friday night we waited for our table at a favorite Italian restaurant. My son usually likes to hold the pager, which is fine with me because when it goes off, it usually startles me into dropping the darn thing; these aren’t good vibrations I’m picking up.
But that night the pager was in my possession, and it appeared from the size of the crowd at the bar, I’d be holding onto it for some time – maybe longer than the 45 minutes the hostess led us to believe. That’s why it came as such a surprise that only two sips into my cabernet sauvignon, our pager started talking.
Oh, it vibrated, too, but after growling to life in my palm, a distinctive lady’s voice spoke up.
“Your table is now ready,” she said. “Please return to the hostess stand to be seated.”
I managed to hang on to my wine glass, but just barely. This is too much, I thought.
What's wrong with harried hostesses yelling out names over the restaurant din to let you know your table is ready?
That was real; they are real.
The voices aren’t.
I’m tired of being startled. I don’t like disembodied voices talking to me, telling me what to do. I don’t have a GPS navigation device in my car for a reason. If I get lost, I’ll stop and ask for directions from a REAL person, thank you very much.
Didn’t anyone see “2001: A Space Odyssey?”
I don’t like where we’re heading, talking machine-wise, and it’s creeping me out.
Alice Coyle is the managing editor of Gatehouse Media New England’s Raynham, Mass. office. You can reach her at acoyle@cnc.com.
