I was wondering if you’ve seen that TV commercial for a user-friendly cell phone.

It features a variety of distracted people in different settings, struggling mightily with their phones.

One guy is so intent on beating his phone into submission that he’s oblivious to his wife prancing around in a skimpy bedtime outfit.

“Really?” she huffs in disgust. He doesn’t hear her. “Really?” she repeats.

I can sympathize. My “smart” phone is an impressive piece of equipment that’ll do anything but cook an egg. But sometimes it’s too smart for its operator. And it’s a long way from user-friendly.

When I bought it, I asked the salesman for the user’s manual. He said it didn’t have one.

“Everything about this phone is intuitive,” he said. “Just play around with it and you’ll figure it out. If you run into trouble, use your browser to access the online user’s manual.”

The nice young man — they’re always young — said this phone had way too many features for a printed manual. He said that if they printed one, it would be bigger than the Dallas phone book.

Maybe. But I know how to operate a Dallas phone book. Operating this phone is another matter.

It’s not that I’m completely lost. I can actually use my phone to surf the Internet, check the weather and follow the news. I can download applications to do everything from scan a barcode to track an airline flight. I can even manage my office e-mail, no matter where I am.

What I can’t do on my phone — consistently, at least — is answer the thing.

Several times a day it rings and no “button” appears to touch and answer. Instead of a button, the screen shows a dozen icons vaguely resembling road kill from a Nintendo game. And not one of those icons will let you answer the phone.

So what I do is push the reset button, which stops the ringing but hangs up on the caller. Then I go to the call log to see who it was I hung up on and call them back.

This is no way to win friends and influence people, I tell you.

It’s a huge problem when I’m driving, so I thought it might help to bypass the phone controls and go hands-free. I asked a technician at the auto dealership to synch my phone to my ride.

The young man — they’re always young — did his magic in a jiffy and sent me and my phone and my pickup on our merry way.

A few minutes later, the phone rang. Believe it or not, I was actually able to answer on the first try. I could hear the caller perfectly.

The caller, however, couldn’t hear a word I was saying.

I wonder if there’s an app for that.

Donnis Baggett is publisher of the Waco Tribune-Herald . While he can’t be reached on his cell phone, his e-mail address is dbaggett@wacotrib.com.