Thank you for your undivided attention

Copyright: rimdream / 123RF Stock Photo

Note: This is satire.

Time to wake up. Your smartphone sits three inches away from your head at bedtime. Last night you had a night terror about being separated from it.

It’s time for morning yoga. You call your Lyft. It arrives on time. The driver is being friendly to you and shares something about his kids, but you have people on the internet to talk to. You send a text and nod. Sounds interesting—whatever he’s saying. You pretend to be engaged so you’ll get a good review and not seem like a total jerk. That’s all that matters. Your driver says bye. You walk out the door—you don’t remember if you remembered to say bye or not. It’s OK. You rated him five stars and tipped him. Your guilt is absolved.

Yoga class begins. You have to feel Zen to start the day. You have to feel at peace. You have to feel closer to a state of dharma. But fuck, you forgot to email your boss about that customer this morning. It’s already been one hour and fifteen minutes since she sent the email. What will she think? She also sent you a chat message. You do the downward dog. You place the phone in front of you. Good thing you have your AirPods on. You tap them twice and whisper into them as the instructor yells out instructions. You respond. There are one or two minor spelling errors, but whatever. Speed is more important than accuracy.

After yoga, you text in line as you wait for the shower. Shit, you have to place your grocery order for the week. You forgot to do it yesterday because you ran out of time. Mid-text, you open another app window — Instacart. You add some of the recommended items from the previous week. You add a few more. Back to the text. Wait, what were you saying? You can’t remember. Whom were you texting? Yikes, small lapse—it’s OK.

Class was great. Time to get some coffee. You walk to the same place every day. You are walking; you are responding to work emails; you are Yelping the place you scheduled tonight’s dinner date for. Exciting. You message your date on Tinder. Seems great. This one is a winner. You pick something rated four and a half stars that has 150-plus reviews. You’ve never been there before, but it’s perfect — it’s three dollar signs, not four. You don’t want to seem pretentious.

BUZZ. A chat message from work. One of your employees is asking you for an answer to something. You can’t decide whether to type or use Siri. You hesitate. You order your coffee really quickly after looking up for a fleeting moment at the barista. Keep going. Faster. You pay using Apple Pay. You wish they had designed this better. You wish you’d be able to respond to the chat messages while using Apple Pay. Design flaw. Maybe they should hire you.

But not right now. You have to do this current job. It pays the bills. At a later date, you’ll pursue your dreams. You have time.

A phone call interrupts your flow. It’s Nicole. Fuck, something happened with her engagement. You’d better answer. You are walking hurriedly to catch the bus from the coffee shop. Why won’t these people get out of your way?

You sit down on the bus. A person with a broken leg is looking for a seat. You consider for a moment giving it to them. Can’t. You need to focus on the call.

You can now multitask while Nicole talks to you. You complete your dinner reservation using OpenTable. She is saying something about her fiancee and her deciding to break things off. The two of them don’t see eye to eye. You throw in a “Sorry to hear that” and a “What can I do to help?” to make her feel better. She says how great you are for just listening. You hear her typing away as she’s talking to you. You both talk about how it’s been way too long, and how you need to hang out soon.

You don’t put anything on the calendar. You both know you won’t get together anytime soon.

Lots of conference calls at work today and lots of meetings. It’s all about meetings. Back-to-back-to-back meetings today. You don’t have five minutes on your calendar to do anything. You’d better use the meeting time efficiently to do other stuff.