“Vivian, why are all my calls going straight to messages?” It was my father-in-law on the phone. He had missed his taxi ride because it came from an unknown number. And I knew it was my fault.

I think most people have some version of a love/hate relationship with technology. I think I’m at 80-90% love. So, when new features come out, I tend to be an early-ish adopter. This also means I’m the go-to IT person in the family. Well, it turns out some features that are meant to make your life easier may make them more difficult, especially if you’re at 80-90% hate.

Last week my father-in-law was grumbling about all the spam calls he received. I thought I was being helpful and turned on the “send unknown callers to voicemail” feature on for him. That feature is great for me because my contacts are all on my phone and I can easily turn it off when I know I might be getting a call from an unfamiliar number. It doesn’t work so great when those things aren’t true.

This morning this “convenience” turned into an almost major inconvenience. Luckily, my father-in-law didn’t really want to take that taxi ride anyway, so it turned okay…this time. I walked him through turning off this feature right away!