Category: Business

Accursed Menus

Business, Technology, Two-Minute Hate

Here’s a rant after my own heart:

I was puzzled, so I checked the website and got nowhere. The password I’d used for the account was suddenly not accepted.
So I phoned the number on the website. And got nowhere. This time the problem seemed to be my PIN.
Or maybe my account number. Or maybe my customer ID. Or my PCN number. Whatever that was. The recorded message didn’t really care. I gave up.
I had become the innocent victim of the new digital age in which the algorithm reigns supreme.
There was a time when a human being with a problem talked to another human being who helped to get it sorted. Those days are gone.
The lives of big companies and government officials are made so much easier if we customers or clients can be kept at arm’s length.

The online experience is bad enough — but when you dare to call the “Customer Care” (ha!) telephone number, that’s really when the SHTF.

A combination of the two above means that I will be changing my Medicare supplemental insurer, because it seems to be the only way I can punish these assholes for their bovine indifference to my situation.

I’ll let Humphrys finish this rant:

Increasingly, we are being deprived of even a semblance of what we once thought of as customer service.
We are left talking to a computer screen behind which sits not another human being, but an algorithm. Or a recorded telephone announcement that may or may not respond to our pleas for help.
It’s as though any human compassion in the relationship between customer and provider has simply disappeared. And that’s very sad.

Or enraging.  Ten guesses which side I’m on.

License Revoked

Business, Wokism

FFS, when AT&T relocated their head office to Dallas, someone at the place which handles business licenses must have been asleep at the wheel, because I’m not sure that this bullshit is going to go down very well at all:

I have obtained a cache of internal documents about the company’s initiative, called Listen Understand Act, which is based on the core principles of critical race theory, including “intersectionality,” “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” and “white fragility.” CEO John Stankey [sic] launched the program last year and, subsequently, has told employees that private corporations such as AT&T have an “obligation to engage on this issue of racial injustice” and push for “systemic reforms in police departments across the country.”
According to a senior employee, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, managers at AT&T are now assessed annually on diversity issues, with mandatory participation in programs such as discussion groups, book clubs, mentorship programs, and race reeducation exercises. White employees, the source said, are tacitly expected to confess their complicity in “white privilege” and “systemic racism,” or they will be penalized in their performance reviews. As part of the overall initiative, employees are asked to sign a loyalty pledge to “keep pushing for change,” with suggested “intentions” such as “reading more about systemic racism” and “challenging others’ language that is hateful.” “If you don’t do it,” the senior employee says, “you’re [considered] a racist.”

Look, I know that most corporations are engaging in this wokeist fuckery, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t snarl at them for doing so.

Under the reign of World-Emperor Kim, these assholes would be forced to move their HQ to California, where they can play these little reindeer games to their hearts’ content, but among people who love to be forced to wear the White Man’s Hairshirt (not to mention face condoms).

Fuck ’em, and their racist crap.

Selling Air

Marketing / Advertising

I remember my dad’s quizzical look when he first learned that water was being sold in bottles.  “Selling water?  Why don’t they sell air with it?” was the printable part of his response,  (Yeah, I know, apples, trees… whatever.)

I confess to having pretty much the same reaction when Combat Controller pointed me at this latest example of foolishness:

Now I have to confess that I thought that this was a spoof / satirical website, and actually refused to believe my friend’s statement that this was, in fact, a bone fide  “product” and not some gag to be played on the gullible.  Or a piece of Harry Potter merchandise.

However, Doggery’s “craft ice” is being sold in stores, and CC sent me photographic proof thereof.

JHC.

There are two schools of thought on this kind of thing.  The first is that of people like Combat Controller, who suggests that we as a nation are so prosperous that we can afford to sell stuff like this, and find a market for it.

I, however, see this as some kind of portent, similar to those things and events which may have appeared a couple of years before the Roman Empire collapsed into ruins.

On the other hand, my dad thought the same about bottled water, and here we still are, lo these many years later.

Your thoughts in Comments.

Market Response

Business, Gummint

This article is proof, as if any were actually needed, that the general public, very much including journalists and most politicians, have no clue when it comes to basic micro-economics:

Bus drivers have been flocking to jobs with haulage firms as HGV operators when companies were desperate and were handing out large signing on bonuses.

Like this should come as a complete surprise.  You have a heavy-duty driving license and are working as a bus driver, when an opportunity comes to do essentially the same job but for much, much more money.  What should you do, oh what should you do?

But let us never forget that a bad situation can always be exacerbated by government regulation:

They said the [public transportation] industry had put in place plans to hire new workers but said they were being put off due to delays in sorting licences.

…which delays are because of government red tape, as evidenced by the very next sentence:

The CPT urged the government to ensure training them was as ‘streamlined and efficient as possible’.

I’m sure that the government is getting right onto that.

Already Here

Business, Good Stuff

From this article:

“My dream is that someday employers will say, “Let’s hire anybody but a college graduate. We’ll teach him what he needs to know for our work. Check out the homeschoolers—they are a really sociable lot.” Imagine getting a fresh and intelligent young worker at age 18, rather than a stultified parrot at age 22.”

I personally know of three companies who already practice this.  All are startup technology businesses, all are incredibly successful, and not one has an HR department.  And one of the three has no female employees.  None.