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Tuesday, July 30, 2013

directionally dysfunctional

I use a GPS for anywhere that I drive to. Even if I've been there before. One of my pet peeves is not being on time for things and I know that if I use GPS I won't get lost and be an hour late. My GPS is also always on because I'm horrible with street names. I drive on Lake Cook Rd. & Milwaukee almost everyday, but it takes me awhile to remember which road they are because I can never match roads with their names. If you told me a place was across from the Target that I got my favorite bathing suit from, I'd know exactly where you were talking about. But if you told me a place was on the intersection of X and Y Road, I would stare at you blankly.

Today I had a major directionally challenged car ride. I ordered pictures offline at Walgreens earlier today for a collage I'm making for my room this year at school. No big deal, right? I order pictures from there all the time. Before you place your order they ask you what Walgreens location you want to pick
up from. I probably spent about 15 minutes staring at the map of different Walgreens locations trying to figure out which one was my "usual" one. Although I wasn't 100% positive which one it was, I chose 15 N. Buffalo Grove Road because I knew for sure that it was on that street. I sent in my order and got an email 45 minutes later saying it was ready to be picked up.

I drove to the Walgreens that I usually go to (labeled 1 on the map) from my house (labeled A) in a amount short time because it's close by. Here's where my issues started. The guy working behind the desk, Niel, couldn't find my pictures. I must have spelled my last name for him 9 times and I was getting extremely frustrated. He printed the pictures so why couldn't he find them? Niel asked if I was positive that I had printed to this Walgreens location. I said I had printed to 15 N. Buffalo Grove Rd and this was BG Rd.

But of course, 15 N. Buffalo Grove was their other location on this road. I felt bad for being difficult about him not finding my pictures because I was the idiot who had went to the wrong place. He gave me directions to the right location, but I still plugged it into my Google Maps app on my phone. I was super confused to where my map was taking me because I didn't remember a Walgreens being where my destination was located. For some reason I kept on driving and following the route and figured it knew where it was taking me.



Where Google Maps thinks a Walgreens is.....
There's a Walgreens right off of Milwaukee (labeled 2 on the map) that seemed to be in the direction that my GPS was taking me so I figured that's where I was supposed to me going. My GPS was having a complete meltdown because it kept recalculating because I was going to the wrong Walgreens. Now I was super confused because there are no other Walgreens around where I was!! And my GPS was saying I had already passed the Walgreens at 15 N. BG Rd. I clicked on the satellite view so I could actually see in real-time where this Walgreens was that I had missed and saw a parking lot. My GPS thought that 15 N. Buffalo Grove Rd. was a church parking lot right next to my old high school. What the actual hell.

I decided to follow the directions that Niel had given me and went back past the first Walgreens I had been to and drove further down BG road (in the opposite direction that my dumb GPS had told me). The Walgreens my photos were actually at (labeled 3 on the map) was about 10 minutes further from the first Walgreens and 20 minutes away from the completely wrong Walgreens by Milwaukee. I had been in my car driving for almost an hour at this point when it should have taken me under 15 minutes to drive there, get the photos and be back home.

And this is why I am completely directionally dysfunctional. Even though if Google Maps hadn't thought the address was a church parking lot I could have gotten to the right place a heck of a lot quicker. I guess we can say it was a joint failure on mine and Google Maps part. But mostly Google, thank you very much.