At some point if they are reliable and they do the job and they are not abusive and they don't steal, you gotta not worry about "perfection."
I see seniors in restaurants, doctor offices, etc, on their phones all the time. I can tell when I'm talking to my best friend of 63 years, we both have landlines, and she is playing with her cell phone or gambling. I don't say anything to her about it.
I'm rarely on my cell phone unless I'm at a doctor's office, and I'm reading the articles that are presented on the DDG search page just to kill time. In the old days, I'd be reading a magazine, but it's been discovered that we're too filthy to touch a magazine someone else might hold, so for our own safety we can't have those anymore.
\ I just cancelled a dental appointment yesterday. I had been up all night for 2 nights, and BP was very high, but I won't be making another appointment till April after most of the sick days are ending, or I hope so.
I was laughing thinking of when cell phones basically came to be a common thing. Not the boxy phone like in the tv series Hart to Hart. Anyway my friend kept asking me when I was going to get one. I thought, probably never. I had an answering machine on my land line. She accused me of being rude for not making it possible to get a hold of me when she wanted to. And for a while at restaurant meetings everyone seemed to be looking things up on their phones whenever a question arose. Fortunately that has stopped and we talk to each other instead.
Yep! After decades of touching magazines in offices and business's, they have decided we are fility critters. I have noticed magazines have been removed from places you get your oil changed or car worked on too. I have seen mechanics walking around with dirty hands drinking coffee or eating a doughnut; touching the coffee pot that the business has set out for customers.
Crazy isn't it? The magazines were removed because of COVID, but now they won't bring them back because they say everyone is texting or playing games on their cells.
The only reason I got my first cell phone is that pay phones were no longer in service. Should I be out of town and have an emergency (or even break down locally), I would be screwed. Regarding your friend...I can't imagine someone being angry at you because they cannot manage their impulse control. Heck, before answering machines, we no longer had the luxury of screening calls. We took our chances, answered the phone, and then dealt with it. But honestly, I wouldn't want to revert to those days.
I've worked in restaurants off and on during my working years and things I saw makes it hard to eat out. Yet everyone survives the nasty habits of most restaurant workers. I had a chicken 'silent' fight with one of my managers. most meat is frozen when put on the grill, she had chicken filets for sandwiches cooking. She would take them off and put them in container on the grill, it was full of bloody chicken juice. So I'd take them back out and put them back on grill, she would put them back in pan for sandwiches. So I just dumped them all back onto grill, she said what are you doing. I told her we have old and very young customers eating this food. And raw meat could make them very sick or worse. She just snatched it up and back in the pan. So I quit the job. Another job was a tomato fight. They'd take the bloody knife they had cut open meat packages with and slice tom's. So I threw the tom's away and sliced with clean knife, well next thing you know the male manager would walk toward me and not step aside like I did after I realized he was being an ass, I didn't step aside either, so we crashed into each other. Another job done gone. Not all restaurants are like this but some are.
If you look at your local Health Department's restaurant inspection reports, you'll see that fast food places are the safest to eat because there's no real prep work of raw meats and veggies taking place. Freezer-->Griddle-->Wrapper-->Bag. Regarding that chicken manager...I worked for a non-profit that would host an awards event every year. We would show up before the event to do set-up, and each of us would bring food for the reception afterwards. One of the members showed up to help, about 5 hours before the food was to be served. She brought chicken salad sandwiches, set the tray of them on a table, then went to work setting up. I asked her if she thought those should sit out for 5 hours, and she got angry. I told her we don't want to make our guests sick and I'd put them in the fridge, and she got even more angry. So while she was setting up tables and her back was turned, I picked up the tray and put it in the fridge. She noticed that it was gone, stomped over to the fridge, took them out, and put them back out on a table. This woman was a retired nurse.
A retired nurse should know better for sure. At least you protected the innocents from her carelessness. Most of the food service jobs were waitress thank goodness. Then I got factory or construction jobs or odd and I do mean odd jobs that didn't last long.
Other than a couple of cancers and now, some old-age stuff, I have been pretty healthy throughout my life, in that I don't tend to catch a lot of whatever might be going around, and I attribute that to growing up in the country, where we didn't wear shoes during the summer and would go camping for a few days at a time without even washing our hands. I've noticed that the clinic where my doctor practices has returned the magazines to the waiting room. On the days that I've been there, there hasn't been a waiting time, though.
This particular person actually threatened she was going to BUY me a phone since I would not. You are right. At our age it is a good thing to have one to call in a time of need.