Here I Go Again – A Link To An Outside Article
Much as I dislike providing live links in posts, I think this article should be spread far and wide.
QTR’s Fringe Finance: “Every Industry Is An Airport Lounge Now“
The New American Digest
For Followers of Gerard Van der Leun's Fine Work
The article describes corporate “services” of today perfectly.
Shift all the burden of time consuming tasks to consumers, save a ton of money and pretend we are somehow being done a favor.
And quite apart from the burden we are forced to assume, and the indifference of the companies and their useless employees, there is a technological element to all of this that makes getting any form of service very difficult for the elderly who may be hard of hearing or less tech savy than they need to be in order to navigate these confounded systems… press 1 for blah blah, press 2 for blah blah blah, press 3 to hear your choices again, press 4 to complete our customer satisfaction survey.
So sick of it. I think everyone is. I do think or at least hope it will eventually inspire a return to proper customer service.
Almost 20 years ago I installed a large 4 tube fluor ceiling fixture in our kitchen. Since then the bulbs have dimmed to where they are useless, time to fix. We have 10 foot tall ceilings so that means standing very close to the top of a 6′ ladder. The fixture is so large that means 2 people on 2 ladders and my wife doesn’t do well on ladders. So, we get the lamp shroud down and I pull 1 tube out and go to my computer. It is a Sylvania XXX XXXX/XXX model. I look it up on google and the first link is to Amazon.
Guess what? The Amazon link is for a different tube than what I typed in. GODDMMITT!!! This shit happens all the time. Thanks to SEO, everything is everywhere but nowhere at all! So I run down a couple more links and it’s the same story over and over. Nobody really has this model of tube but they all say they do in the search results.
So I look at the closest Menards site and they say they have 43 of that exact model in stock. I jump in my ride and make that 45 mile round trip just to find out they don’t have that model neither. So I chose another 4 tubes of another model and hope for the best.
Get back to the house and install the tubes and 1 of them doesn’t work. JEEZZIISS EFFIN CRYSS. Wiped from over exposure to society, I tell my wife I’ll wait till the next day to head back out to Menards.
I go to Menards, argue with the obese cow at the desk about exchanging the one that didn’t work for one that did. She dikked around with the computer then handed me some paperwork and I was off. I grabbed another tube and headed to the desk at the electrical dept. 2 older doods working there with “stupid” written all over their faces. I ask if they can test this tube to make sure it works. They said they have no way to test it, “Sorry!”. I said, “You have a stack of 4′ shop lamps right there, open one, plug this tube in and see if it works.” They looked at me like I was a magician in order to come up with such an idea. But then one of them admitted he was a nutless cuck and said, “Oh, we can’t do that.” I said, while looking in his eyes, “If I have to come back because of this tube I’m gonna come find you.” Then I laid rubber.
I really hate going out into society because when I eventually do I always find things are worse than the last time. You’ve heard of that saying about “Watching paint dry.”? Well that has been replaced with, “Watching people become more stupid.”
FWIW our kitchen is now as bright as a neurological surgery room – just the way I like it.
SEO: Search Engine Optimization
This where programmers have imbedded entire dictionary’s and thesauruses into the background of every website of paying customers. That’s why, no matter what you search for now, it will show up in hundreds of links where the item does not actually exist, just to get you to come to their site.
My belief, and hope, is that eventually, AI will get this stuff back on track by upping the level of complexity. For example, maybe I could take a pik of the printed label on the end of one of the fluorescent tubes and send it to my computer. Then I could upload that pik to an AI search engine that send spiders out and find ONLY products with that exact picture on it.
If I was King Of The Planet I would make this happen on the first day of my ascension as well as about 10,000 other things that are urgently needed now to grease the gears of productivity and weed out all the parasitic flotsam that is dragging society down. HOO-AHH!
“My belief, and hope, is that eventually, AI will get this stuff back on track”
AI is going to make things far worse, not better.
Circa 9,000,000 BC, OGG the cave man invents the wheels and, beaming, shows it to his neighbor, ROGG. ROGG sees it and exclaims, “OMG, that’s going to make things worse!!!”
You may very well be correct DT, in fact, I’d bet money on it. My hope though is, like the common search engine of 20 years ago – where, if you were educated in how to create a proper search string, you would get a reasonable search result. (Before SEO ruined everything)
I hope there will be a similar sunrise with the advent of AI, and then the gradual sunset will be expected. I want to enjoy the sunrise, and by the time the sunset draws near I’ll most likely have made my “exit stage left”.
You’re more optimistic than I when it comes to technology innovations.
I was just reading on the newagtalk forums about the demise of county stores. They used to be all over. Now all we have left are Dollar General and so called convenience stores run by Sikhs.
Speaking of county stores.
Nigh on 8 years ago I wrote something and Gerard published it.
Then in the comments section I wrote the following.
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Posted
OMG ! I love it!