My car was in the shop and my wife was nice enough to say she’d pick me up at the airport. After waiting 20 minutes, she called to say she was having car problems but had managed to park in a strip center at Colony Road and the Sam Rayburn Tollway. I told her I’d grab a cab and meet her.
I got into the airport cab and the cab took off. The driver asked for the address and I told him just to head east on the tollway and I’d tell him when to turn. This got him rather agitated and he asked again for the address while stabbing his GPS keyboard. I told him we’d exit north on Colony Road. This didn’t work for him. He said he had to have an address. I called back my wife and she said the number on the business was 5466. The driver stabbed some more and said GPS didn’t have that. I called back and asked my wife for the name of the business. She told me and I relayed this to driver who was spending most of his time swerving back and forth on the turnpike as he entered various names into his GPS.
A few miles later, but far from my destination, he takes an early exit and drives south. I ask him where he’s going. He says his GPS says the business is six miles south. I tell him to turn around because he’s going the wrong way. He argues his GPS says to go south. I told him to stop the cab. I paid my fare and walked to the nearest gas station.
I asked the attendant if he had the number for a local cab company. He did and I called it. I told the dispatcher I was at the gas station at the South Josey Road tollway exit. He asked for the address. I said it’s the only gas station at the intersection. He said he knew where it was, but their GPS system needed an address to send the cab to; the attendant didn’t know the address. I hung up and called a neighbor who arrived with a sense of humor and a ride to get me to my wife.
This is the same neighbor that was kind enough to let me use his address for arriving packages. Two years ago the McKinney Post Office erased our home. They had switched to a new software program and didn’t enter the house address of seventeen years. I discovered this when I noticed no mail or packages were being delivered. I contacted the Post Office and they said there was nothing they could do. I contacted my Congressman and after a year of pushing he was able to get the Post Office to correct their error and I started to get mail delivered to the house again, but there are still some GPS programs that show an error message when I use my address.
There are hundreds of stories of bad addresses that have people following their GPS into lakes and even into the wrong country. In some instances, the employer won’t permit the employee to use their common sense and dictates that GPS must always be followed. However, many people voluntarily surrender their common sense and robotically obey computer devices that were intended to aid human decisions—not replace them. As for me, I’ll keep a map in the glovebox and try to avoid cabs.
