I know that I have previously documented my problems with Siri. And, honestly, our relationship has pretty much come to a complete halt. I don’t feel that she is reliable and sometimes she’s even a little condescending about my Texas accent.
I can just tell that she thinks she’s better than me.
But even though I don’t ask her to perform any routine tasks anymore after being mocked too many times by her insistence that I pronounce my sister Amy’s name like Jaime’, I have still found comfort and solace in her GPS capabilities. Siri might not recognize the word “y’all” but she has always known how to get me someplace.
So before I left for Waco late Tuesday afternoon, I went to the maps function on my phone and began to type in the address of the hotel where I was staying that night. And to my shock and surprise, it filled in the address for me because it automatically recognized it from the confirmation email I’d received from the MOPs leader.
I found this to be an exciting new development and attributed it to the new upgrade. Frankly, this was really the first pleasant discovery of that whole thing and almost made up for the fact that my phone interface now feels more like a Candyland board. I really can’t even talk about the changes to the Calendar app. Sufficed to say, there’s a good chance I may miss all remaining appointments for 2013. It’s enough to make me think about going back to my paper calendar system of ye olden days.
Anyway, Siri seemed to have a good grasp of my Waco hotel location and I felt like she was trustworthy. I made it down I-35, took the game-changing toll road around Austin and then hit I-35 again. Easy breezy.
But it was when I had to exit Highway 6 that the first problem arose. Siri failed to specify which way I needed to go, north or south. I picked south and that was the wrong decision. I realized it almost immediately because I knew I should be heading toward Lake Waco.
So I made a u-turn and began to follow the rest of Siri’s directions. And she led me down Highway 6 past Lake Waco. Here is where I need to confess that I had no idea that Lake Waco was actually a lake. I mean I’ve heard people reference Lake Waco, but it never occurred to me that it was a real lake. I’m not sure what else I thought it would be, but I need you to know I was stunned by the massive body of water I crossed.
As I kept driving I began to question Siri because I have never been so out in the middle of nowhere. Eventually she told me to exit Lake Waco/Speegleville Road. So I did. Then made the turn around like she suggested and found myself at the edge of nowhere. As I sat there in my car looking at nothing but trees and desolation I became convinced that this is how it was all going to end. I’d been lured under false pretenses to Waco by a serial killer who had given me directions to a fictional hotel as part of a scheme. I concocted an entire plot to a horror movie as I sat and tried to figure out where it had all gone wrong.
I looked up the address of the hotel again and when I went to double-check my GPS I realized that Siri had taken it upon herself to delete the street address portion of my directions and had just given me directions to get to Woodway, Texas. I can tell you that it is almost as remote of a destination as Fantasy Island.
So I typed the hotel address back into the GPS only to have Siri tell me that she couldn’t help me because she couldn’t find me.
I don’t even understand.
How can you not find me? I’m right here. Holding you in my hand. There is nothing about me that is playing hard to get.
But she insisted I was nowhere to be found. She couldn’t tell me how to get where I was going because she didn’t know where I was in the first place.
Dear Siri, I hate you.
After a few minutes of being astounded and confused, common sense finally prevailed and I called the hotel to ask for directions. Just like the Ingalls family did when they crossed the Minnesota prairie. It was all so low-tech and 1985. And the nice lady on the phone gave me clear, concise directions that included normal phrases like “turn right past the 7-11”. She never once told me that she couldn’t help me because she couldn’t find me.
And confirmed once and for all that sometimes smart phones aren’t very smart at all.