“In WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE, Kurt Vonnegut Jnr writes, “a sane person in an insane society must appear insane”. Thomas Stephen Szasz contends: “Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society”. And the British psychiatrist R. D. Laing said insanity was “a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world”. I think I recall Star Trek’s Mr Spock saying something similar.”
– Source
(I’m not vouching for the content of this entire article–it is simply the first that popped up with the quote which I’ve heard before!)
As I am on-and-off hold, with suddenly dropped phone calls, with a series of support agents at two different major institutions I must deal with whose right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing, with two different and separate issues (one going back 5 months, another 2 months) that were truly the result of the many confounding black holes we call technology and modern life, with agents who don’t speak English as their first language who insist they can help, when they can’t, because they can’t hear, they can’t break from script, they can’t read notes from other similar agents who also told me wrong information, who compounded what would seem like very simple problems to deal with…oh, and we punch in the numbers to the prompt and when a live agent comes on, we are asked for the same numbers…oh…wait, there is yet a third big, known service provider involved…with similar agents…over and over I tell the details of the problem any native English speaker with average understanding, customer service abilities and less automated technology from even 20 years ago likely could have easily put a quick end to confusion and mistakes…nevertheless, with each call, each note I make until it is resolved, each email….hours upon hours lost on basic nonsense…my blood pressure raises, my voice angers, my anxiety escalates and my frustration intensifies.
It would seem in my fantasy world, if I had all these moving pieces before me in normal fashion on my clerical desk, 30-40 years ago, if that were my job to resolve a customer’s issues, in a fair and understandable way and process, I would have given myself to doing that.
Instead, I am on the end of all this, as we all are day after day after day…and there will never be some true apology.
Something from some corporate entity or human on the end of the line that says, “I’m so sorry for all of this. It was our fault. And as a courtesy for your massive loss of time, here’s a gift card to Starbucks.”
Instead, I the customer, am likely viewed as wrong…or worse…crazy and demanding. Because, these days I’m not sure being polite in these situations helps. And with every additional call, email or whatever to slews of agents who have no real idea how to fix any of it, and to which I have to repeat the details endless times, I will not only not get any apology, I, like you, will get an immediate customer satisfaction survey via text, email or robotic voice asking me to yet stay on the phone line.
And somehow, we all consider this normal and those who can’t get on board with calm evolutionary adaption, insane.
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