one more time, with feeling

Okay. This is making less and less sense to me.

The trick for keeping a cell phone from becoming a leash is not to answer it? That's what I'm coming away with from the last round of comments.

If I'm not going to answer it how is that going to make me more available? I can check my answering machine when I get home if that's what I'm going to do.

I'm not trying to be difficult here. I just don't understand how, if I don't answer my phone, it will serve the purpose of keeping me available to people who might hire me (people who, for the most part, will not have phone numbers I will recognize, so selective ignoring isn't going to be a useful concept here).

tygerr, unfortunately, the phone would have to go in my purse. Pockets are a lovely thing, but most women's clothes do not have functional pockets, which is why we have purses (come to think of it, I think that's a chicken and egg scenario). I tend to put stuff in my purse and forget it's there until I either need it or I realize my purse is heavy enough to start bothering my shoulder again, at which point I clean it out. The last two cell phones I owned met that latter fate when I found them long since expired during those periodic clean-outs. I rarely if ever wear clothing that would work with a belt, either (if you were as short and bigbusted as I am, you'd avoid belts, too [wry g]). But I thank you for taking the time to explain how it works for you, and I hope I didn't hit your gender wars trigger too hard [g].

azurelunatic, I suspect the Google phone thing might be useful if I was willing to transfer calls to the workplaces I'll be at. I don't think that'll work, given the circumstances. But I appreciate the suggestion.

I'm still not seeing a way to make this round of prepaid cellphone purchase different enough from the last two distinctly unsuccessful rounds that it will work for me. Yeah, having the reminders that I need to buy more minutes emailed to me will help. I think. But that's not enough for it to be actually useful.

Any thoughts on that??? Pretty please?

okay, uncle

I'm obviously coming across as someone who wants to be told I don't need a cell phone.

This in spite of that statement being as untrue as is humanly possible.

I'm someone who desperately doesn't want one who knows I need one because of work. There's a huge difference.

And I'm someone who doesn't want a third cell phone to go the way of the first two, and is trying very, very hard to figure out how to keep that from happening, but has absolutely no clue how to go about that. If the phone's just going to end up in the bottom of my purse as another piece of dead electronics, it's not going to be of any use to me, and unless I know how, step by step, not to let it do that, that's what's going to happen, and I'll just have wasted more money.

So I need to know how to make something I really don't want but do need work for me.

Not to be told that I don't need one.

'Kay?

If you feel that I am still coming across as someone who wants to be told I don't need a cell phone, I'm sorry, I don't know what else to say.

I really don't have anyone else to ask these kinds of questions. I've tried.

Who else do I ask?