Back in the halcyon days of Sixty Minutes we enjoyed watching the weekly skewering of corporations and their executives by Mike Wallace. It was schadenfreude at its best, as these elite targets endured the worst day of their lives. To provide a lighter counterpoint, the show ended with comments by Andy Rooney. Each week he would rant on something, usually mundane. Most of the time he would pose a question that many of us had thought about at one time or another. The goal was to point out the absurdities of life at that time.
My early, and lifelong, exposure to computers has made me a hard core believer in logic. Seventy five years experience on this planet has reduced my patience for any perceived lack of logic. The result is that I am a curmudgeon, but not in the traditional sense. I’m very unlikely to be that guy yelling “Hey you kids, get off my lawn!”. That’s in part because I have barely any lawn, and partly because I’m unlikely to get mad if they let me play too. But I still have my moments, and not just a few of them.
With that I present to you a few examples of contributed to the state of my curmudgeonly state. There are more, so many more. I’ll share them in small doses, lest I draw you into the dark side of curmudgeon-ness.
Your call is very important to us. That’s because hiring enough people to deal with your calls would reduce the year end bonus of our CEO. So instead we have one seriously overworked operator, with a limited grasp of English, struggling to deal with irate people. It’s a terrible job, not well paid, so it’s usually someone new, and barely trained, that tries to take your call.
We’re experiencing heavier than normal call volumes. You’re the third person to call this week. We’re doing our best, but please be patient. Have you tried our website? We have a brand new AI attendant there that won’t help you, but will keep you busy trying things you’ve already tried that didn’t work.
Please listen to the menu, as our options have changed. That’s because we know you have called so many times that you know exactly what buttons to push. This disclaimer is there so you won’t go right to the option you want, thereby giving us a little more time on our Solitaire game.
Nobody likes insurance, but we all have to have it, especially if you are still making payments on whatever you are insuring. Despite the claims in their TV commercials, customer loyalty is not a priority. No matter what you do, the price will go up every single year. You may be tempted to use one of the many online services that promise to find you a better deal. Just fill out this simple 47 page form, giving us every detail of your life down to your shoe size. We’ll provide those details to every company on earth, while we are “searching” for your best deal. You’ll be hearing from them constantly via mail, email, and text messages, forever.
Even if you live in a fireproof fortress and drive less than 10 miles per year, the rates will continue to go up. New offers will always be much lower than you would pay to renew. How is this possible? The secret is discounts that magically decline once you are brought into the fold. The fine print on the low-ball offers you get always says the price is contingent on you bundling your house, car, dog, and cat policies into their offering. Each year those discounts decline until you have no choice but move to another company. Of course you can always call to see if you can get a better rate. Your call is very important to them.
Shopping is a necessity, unless you are self-sustaining with your own farm. If you are, how can you possibly have enough time to read this? Otherwise you are probably like me. You use a credit card to pay for everything, and just (hopefully) pay it off once a month. In return the benevolent credit card company, that collects 18-25% interest from you monthly, will “reward” you by giving back a few percentage points of your money. At least this way you don’t have to have a backpack full of currency so you can pay for your loaf of bread.
So here we are at the checkout terminal. Did you remember to have the checker scan your “loyalty” card? No? No discounts for you! We need that loyalty card so we can sell your preferences to every company that sells anything. Okay, just let me pay and get out of here. As usual, this terminal is unlike any I’ve ever seen before. Will it let me pay via watch or phone? Maybe, but if not I’ve got to actually put my card into the terminal like a cave man. There are 7 different slots that I could put a card into or through. Which one do I use? There is a cryptic, almost worn off, image of how the card should be put in. Nope, did it wrong, try again. Pay no attention to the 75 customers in line behind you that are trying to arrange for a hit man to take you out as soon as you leave the store. It’s at this point I’m likely to play the “age card” and act like a befuddled old man. It’s taking less and less acting skill to do this.
Cable TV was a big deal when it came to our neighborhood many decades ago. Of course there was only one company that owned that cable, so you had no options other than the limited network programming available free via antenna. When the Internet became a public utility they gleefully added high speed Internet to your bill. Price increases were like Santa, showing up every year. In addition they could charge you $12 a month, forever, for a box of electronics that cost them less than $30. Our hatred for them correspondingly increased.
But wait! Technology came along to save us with the miracle of video streaming. Just plug this absurdly cheap (Well, except Apple, but hey, it’s Apple!) box into your Internet connection and have access to the entire world. Call the cable company, cancel TV, and return their box. Expect strong resistance.
The robber barons of cable realized they were in trouble, so they upped their Internet game. This so-called “cord cutting” was really a diversion, as they could still gouge us for Internet. But hey, look at all the great content we can get online now! Olympic ferret racing? We got it on the Weird Sports service. Grade Z movies from 1948? Sure, sign up for the Old Timers service.
Suddenly we’re back to the cable TV problem. To get all the programs we want, we have to subscribe to a dozen different services. Well we showed them! We’ll just watch what we want on a “no contract” service, then discontinue. This worked briefly until the services caught on. They then started dropping one episode per week on the hottest shows, so you (and your wallet) had to stay committed. (Remember Game of Thrones ?) And just like that, we’re back to paying more for our entertainment than we previously did for the overpriced cable.
And, once again, we have 17,485 choices of what to watch tonight, but there’s nothing we haven’t already seen or want to see.
Long live the curmudgeons!