If you’re familiar with the alphabet, you’ll appreciate that any list of names sorted in alphabetical order that includes mine, will place me somewhere near the top. Indeed, unless you have friends named Aaron, Abraham, Abel or Abi, I’m quite possibly heading your list. Now think about your mobile phone contact list, and you’ll appreciate that when you want to, say, send me a text, it’s not hard to find my name. It’s right there at the top!
On the other hand, if you don’t want to send me a text message, it’s also quite easy to inadvertantly send it to me anyway since a slip of the finger means that you’ve selected me.
Now consider a couple of possibilities. Your phone’s unlocked, and one of its softbuttons says the following in sequence if you keep pressing it: “New Message” “Add Recipient” “Select Contact” “Send Message” [Return to start].
You might begin to appreciate that a phone in your pocket alongside, perhaps, a particularly angled key or coin, and you could be repeatedly pressing that softbutton a lot of times.
Guess what? That means that the person at the top of the list can get multiple blanks texts. And let me tell you, it happens more often than you think.
Other things that can happen to those lucky enough to appear at the top of phone lists include misdirected texts when the sender’s inebriated. Certainly I’ve had very curious texts arrive on my phone in the early hours of the morning which are occassionally followed by “Please ignore my last text” messages.
Then there’s straightforward calls from your pocket. One colleague repeatedly phoned me from a trip to Russia, running up an expensive bill. Even turning my phone off just meant that my voicemail got filled with rubbish. I’ve heard plenty of ambient train and car travel noises, as well as the background sounds from pubs and bars.
My top tip to you, if you’re phone is inclined to make calls or texts without your assistance, is to enter a dummy “AAA” name at the top with a number that can’t be dialled like “1”. Think of all the money you’ll save?