How do I get to your website?

Here's a brief rundown of technology as it exists in 2026: Our applications are online. We don't do paper ones. The end.

Great.

Now that you're all caught up, let's move on.

There are a variety of ways we collect potential applicants (e.g., phone, in-person, website, etc.), and the single fastest way to get someone started on the application and interview process  is to redirect them to our website to fill out an application. That also gives them the opportunity to attach their resume (if they have one) to further the process beyond the most basic: name, phone number, email address.

Speaking of websites, it is important and relevant to this story to let you know I quit spelling out our website quite a long time ago. There are several letters that sound extremely similar over the phone (F and S; B, D, P, T; etc) and even more so if someone as an accent or English is not their first language. Add to that the fact that our company name seems to be constructed exclusively from letters that are hard to tell apart, and you have a recipe for disaster. For a while, I would attempt to spell things out phonetically (eg. T as in telephone, C as in cat, B as in banana, and so on and so forth). But, alas, that usually ended up with the person on the other end getting confused (don't ask me why), and we would end up starting all over when they inevitably screwed everything up.

Instead, I started to just tell people to Google our phone number, and it will bring up our website. Pretty straightforward and seemed to work infinitely better than attempting to spell out something a dozen times. Problem solved, right?

But.

Always a but.

But then you have the people who, well, they're just in a special league of their own:

Me starting a bit into the conversation): You can submit your application on our website. If you just google our phone number, it'll bring you right to the site.

How Do I Get There (HDIGT): Website?

Me: Yes, website. You can put in an application very easily there.

HDIGT: Ok, how do I get there?

Me: As I stated, you can google our phone number, and it'll bring you right to the website.

HDIGT: And what's your phone number?

Me: The one you dialed to call.

HDIGT: And how do I google it?

Me: By going to Google, typing our phone number into the search bar, and searching for it.

HDIGT: Ok, and what is it?

Me: What is what?

HDIGT: Your phone number. Otherwise I'll need to look it up online so I can use it to search for your website.

At that point, I just gave the phone number. Obviously, telling him our phone number is the one he used to call us was too difficult to comprehend. Much like it was too difficult to comprehend googling our phone number online, despite the fact he gave away his ability to look something up online by asking for our phone number so he would not need to look it up online.

There are days when it's just easier to give in to idiocy instead of finding a small semblance of satisfaction by passive aggressively pointing out the idiocy in a way that I know they won't understand. You win some, you lose some.