I don't know how digest-worthy this is, but I think it's relevant. Like so many Americans I've had to take a part-time job in retail because I can't find another job in manufacturing where I worked for nearly 20 years. I sell technology products at a well-known national chain. A lot of people come in to look at landline telephones. I have noticed customers fall into two camps. Older people who think the phones are far too complicated. And younger people who simply don't understand how landline phones work.
A customer came in needing a phone. I had to let her win the argument that she could only use an AT&T branded phone because she had AT&T service. Obviously a Panasonic, Uniden, or RCA wouldn't be compatible with her AT&T service. Another customer was very suspicious when I told him the same thing that the modular jack was universal. But he did buy a non-AT&T phone.
About a week ago a customer returned phones I had sold him that morning. He was quite irate. He bought a cordless unit that included four handsets. He was furious that he could be on one handset and someone else in his house could pick up another handset and hear his conversation. I explained to him they were merely extensions of his home phone number. He thought he was buying a family plan of cordless phones each with its own number. But by his reaction you'd have thought I was the crazy one. How could a single phone number work on multiple phones?
It seems to me cellular phones and service are the new normal and landline phones are now considered strange and weird. Knowing this I'm not as thrown off by customer questions.
John