If somebody asks me where I am, I give them the address. If somebody asks me for directions, I will give them directions. What if they’re on a pay phone at a gas station, and they need to get to your house, or the hospital? How shitty would it be for you to tell them to go to Yahoo Maps? Not everybody has a GPS, not everybody has access to the internet.
Even better is when someone wants to give you directions but they can only do it if you are travelling a certain way.
clueless person: so head south down the …
me: I’m coming from the other direction.
cp: wha?
me: I’m on the other side of the office from you, I have to drive North to get there.
cp: But thats how I get to the office.
me: Yes but I am coming from somewhere else.
cp: But I don’t go that way, I can only give you the directions for my usual route.
me: Just give me your street address.
cp: I’m not sure what it is, I’ll just ask someone.
me: AAAARGH!
I have almost this exact conversation many times when trying to get to a new client for a meeting.
And you don’t need internet access or a GPS, a good old fashioned map works just as well, and can save you from embarrasment when your GPS decides it can’t see any satelites and has no idea where you are.
You won’t find my house using internet instructions and the address. I know because when we moved up here I was totally unfamiliar with the area and was relying on Mapquest to get me to the new house. I wound up so lost and distracted that I ran a red light and got pulled over, and the cop took pity on me and led me home. Actually, you won’t find anything in this town using internet directions, unless you just get really, really lucky. Your GPS will probably get you there, but it’ll want you to go places that are a really, really bad idea–like the trucker who followed his GPS down a road that’s got about a 70-degree slope and a bunch of 270 turns. Surprisingly enough, he made it almost to the bottom before jackknifing, but no human being would ever have routed him that way.
And I can understand the directions not being so great in our little mountain town, but I’ve had the internet route me crazy, impossible directions in Lexington and Greensboro. We’re not talking new construction, either–Mapquest will give you insane directions from a major road to a 70-year-old house 2 turns off that road.
My take home lesson from all this is that the internet is fine for getting from town to town, but if you want to navigate in a town, talk to a human being.
I feel the need to reiterate my point. If you’re so internet savvy, why do you need me to give you the address to begin with? Just effing google the address, too. I guess there are some people who aren’t listed. If someone’s not listed, then perhaps they should ask first before giving directions. But if you’re asking me how to get to the nearest post office, Mc Donald’s, Wal-Mart or sex toy store, I’m going to assume you don’t have the internet to look this nonsense up, and I’m going to give you directions.
Mapquest used to tell people to drive in the wrong direction for 4 miles when leaving my house to go north to Raleigh. It did route people on major roads but not the shortest route.
Because, in my case, my address is not on google maps or any GPS unit maps. I used to attempt to protest, explaining that we’re in a former research laboratory on what was until recently a private road and that they will simply not be able to locate us on their GPS. Now I’m sure you’re a smart person and you’d relent and accept my directions, but I’ve had dozens of people insist all they needed is my address. So now I don’t protest very much, as long as it’s a sales rep who is only meeting with me and I know I can work productively for an extra half hour while they’re scrambling around trying to find my office.
I haven’t used an in-car GPS, do they let you directly input a latitude and longitude for a destination?
Got me beat. No fucking way I’d tell you the way here.
I’ve never given more than an address if that’s what they ask for. Why would you?
I had to stand on my porch and flag down the pizza guy last week. Don’t they all have GPS now? I mean, my house is NOT hard to find. He kept calling me and going the wrong way on my street and passing the Gay and Lesbian Advocacy Center, which he started to call “that fag joint”. It was charming. He didn’t have a pen for me to sign the charge slip, either.
My house is not listed in any mapping software I’ve seen. In fact, most of them have trouble finding my town. So we give everyone directions out here.
90% of them don’t use them and try to use their GPS or a mapping software.
Oh, and cell phones only work about 25% of the time (and only if you have Verizon…sorry AT&T users) so when they figure out that they can’t find our house they can’t even call us.
My parent’s GPS tried to take them over 10 miles away in the middle of the forest. I asked my mom if she had the directions we gave them and she said, “Oh, we don’t use directions anymore, our GPS always works.” Yeah, the same GPS that took them from Richmond, VA to Detroit, MI through the surface streets of D.C.
I think it’s a bit strange to assume everyone has the latest high tech gadget. It’s not a big deal to ask someone if they need directions.
Oh, thanks for triggering my nightmares…
I’m phobic about driving in busy cities: Philadelphia, NYC, DC, even Baltimore. I’m white-knuckled from the time we start encountering real traffic to the time we’re out of it.
Once, probably five years ago, we went to an event in White Plains, NY. My dear supervenusfreak, not yet familiar with the vagaries of driving long distances, MapQuested the route from Lancaster to White Plains. I, not realizing he wasn’t familiar with MapQuest’s idiosyncrasies, didn’t look at the directions, as he was “navigating” for me.
Goddamn MapQuest, instead of going up the Hudson and going over the Tappan Zee, had us going over the George Washington and through the Bronx to get to White Plains. I. Was. Terrified. The damn highway goes from 8 lanes to 4 in the space of about 25 yards on the Jersey end of the GW Bridge, and those 8 lanes were FULL. My city driving phobia includes the fear that I’m going to be in the wrong lane for whatever exit I need to be in, so that was adding to my anxiety. Then we have to deal with the Cross-Bronx Expressway(? I think). Seriously…I was not very happy for about an hour after we’d finally arrived at the event (not at supervenusfreak…at MapQuest).
GPS units and mapping software are great, and they have their place, but they can really be screwed up sometimes. I used Google Maps to check the route between two local points, and it wanted me to go 8 miles out of my way.
I was pretty sure I knew the route, but just wanted to double-check it, and see if there was a quicker way or a side street that I could use as a short cut.
I knew it was around 5 or 6 miles, and all surface streets.
Google Maps wanted me to go 2 miles out of my way, get on the highway, go around the city and then to my destination. It would have been 13 miles.
I refigured it to the route I wanted, and it was 5.1 miles. :rolleyes:
This is my pet peeve with stores. I’ll call and ask where they are located and get the question where am I coming from. Where I am has no bearing on where the store is.
Learn something new every day. This would be the southern end of the Cascades?
No, the mountains just outside Los Angeles. Not many people from outside the area realize that they typically get a lot of snow in the winter.
From the perspective of someone the OP’s ranting about, I find this rant kind of depressing. I always assumed it was considered polite to give people, particularly those you know have never been to a certain location or who rarely visit said location, the directions to get to that place. I thought (incorrectly, I guess) that I was helping out my invitees by reducing the number of steps they’d need to go through before a get-together.
I really appreciate it when someone provides me directions to get somewhere. Then all I have to do is print out the invitation and stick it on my fridge or shove it in my bag. Since I’m usually rushing for the door to be on time, that way I don’t have to stop and go, “Crap! I need to get directions first!”
Some of you protesting with “GPS will never find our house!” sound like you live way out in the boonies, and if I ever had to go out to a place like that I might take heed. But I live in Los Angeles. The roads here are pretty well-established and I have yet to get wrong directions from Google Maps or GPS. And I’ve never seen snow either.
It’s cultural.
When people ask me for an address, that’s what I give. Most of the people I know do that: in Barcelona, in Philadelphia, in Miami, in Pamplona… But I spent a year in Castellon and not only did people always give me directions, they couldn’t grasp the concept of me not knowing the frame of reference they used.
Me: Hello, I’m calling about the flat you have up for rental in Hermanos Mut, is it still available?
(yadda yadda)
Agent: let’s meet at our agency, we’re across from where Paco’s Bar used to be.
Me: Well, I’m from out of town so I have no idea where that is, can you give me the address?
Agent: oh, just at the old Paco’s Bar, you know, where it was before?
Me: I’ve been in town for all of five days, I have no idea where Paco’s Bar is or where it was before, can you please give me your address?
Agent: At Paco’s old Bar!
Me: Can you give me the name of the street?
Agent: The street?
Me: Yes, what’s the name of the street you are in?
Agent: But we’re just at Paco’s Bar old location! Just across the street!
I didn’t murder any agents for two reasons, in no particular order: it’s illegal and I couldn’t find them anyway.
ETA: wait wait wait, angels do have sex now? Does that mean they also got a gender upgrade?