Hello there, web form asking me for my personal information!

I can understand why my address is “required information”, even though not everybody has an address. It may indeed be difficult to ship something to someone without an address.

However, “home phone” is also required by you. I do not have a home phone. I do not (think I) know anybody under the age of 30 who has a home phone. Not unless they have DSL, in which case they have may or may not have an actual phone attached to that phone line, and if they do have a phone attached to that phone line the only people who call it are telemarketers. I don’t know why they know that the only people who call it are telemarketers since it was silly of them to answer a phone that rings when someone dials a number they never gave out to anyone, but that’s kind of irrelevant to my main point here.

I filled in your “home phone” field with “N/A” because it is not applicable, but that’s not good enough for you. You only accept entries in the form ###-###-####. Give me a break. Even if I did have a home phone number your form should at least be programmed to be smart enough to figure out that any entry with at least ten digits (or alternatively a “1” followed by ten other digits) is an acceptable phone number. But, as I’ve pointed out, I don’t have a home phone number. Your form is impossible to fill out without lying. And lying is bad. You will not accept the truth, even if I spell it out in full: “not applicable”. You can’t handle the truth.

Didn’t you see that I also filled in your “cell phone” field with my cell phone number? That’s better than a home phone number. If you call my cell phone number you can contact me all the time, even if I am not at home. But when I am home, it still works there, too! You can send me text messages. You can leave me voicemail even if I don’t own some fiddly analog tape-thingy.

Get a clue, dudes.