Ask HN: Does anyone else notice increased incompetence?

For example, I've been trying to get medical records for 3 weeks and the office keeps: faxing the wrong number, faxing the wrong release forms, giving us incorrect status info, etc.

Another example is a legal matter I'm now involved with. The officer wrote the citation for the wrong statute (more serious), gave us incorrect information in how to request records, misspelled a name on the citation, and put the wrong time (by hours) on the citation. The court also gave us incorrect information on requesting records, gave us the wrong kind of subpeona and won't correct it, and the staff doesn't even know what an affidavit is.

We saw several doctors during an SVT event 48 hours after multiple simultaneous immunizations. They all said unequivocally that the events were unrelated, but could not produce data to support their opinion nor refute the thousands of arrhythmia events in VAERS data. (There's no data to concretely prove or disprove, so it's unknown). So now I have to submit ther VAERS report. Doctors like this will lead to under reporting, impacting studies on safety.

My wife once picked up an old traffic cone that had been abandoned in a ditch for more than 30 days. An officer wrote her a citation and she just plead guilty and mailed the fine in. She didn't realize it was for a misdemeanor when the officer was supposed to write it for a summary offense. She kept getting denied when applying for jobs and found out that was the reason. She had to get a lawyer to get it correct - at her expense. (This was long before we met)

A local police department was spreading similar misinformation on Facebook about something being a misdemeanor when it should have been a summary offense. I ended up having to get the DA involved to set them straight so they wouldn't ruin someone else's life.

Hire a contractor to power wash part of a house, and they simply _did not do half the work._ Not a matter of a half-assed job, simply was not even done. When called back, they proceeded to skimp in almost the same way, except when confronted over there being literal clumps of dirt still on sections they did claimed "oh I guess it just came off easier a second time."

What's absurd is like you I've experienced it in life-threatening fields as well. I'm currently contesting a rather pricy medical bill as a result of a surgery, that should be covered, when I call my insurance provider they claim should be covered, but then I... keep getting bills for. Even calling the university sending the bills, they claim it should be covered, claim they put a "note on my account" but then the bills keep coming. I've spent 12+ man hours being fed BS by a string of companies who have shown no real ability to actually rectify a glaring, financially critical issue.

It's just crazy to me how pervasive it is, even for well-reputed companies. I feel like if I was this bad at my job I'd be fired in an instant, but then I see managers in my stack whom engineers have _abysmally_ low reputations of (have had HR reports for bullying, have pushed individuals out of the company, regularly are caught in lies/misdirection) get continual promotions and praise.

There really seems to be two classes of accountability in this world, and for those jobs where there really isn't any, I get the sense it's become a race to the bottom. (Look in govt. as well. It's basically dogma that campaign promises are full-of-shit, but we continually accept them at face value/there's no recompense when they're inevitably not met.)

Yes! I look at these other jobs and think how great it would be to work in a position that had no accountability.

Yeah, but the lives of people that the worker who actually produces the citation/form/record/whatever will never see, doesn’t care about, and just views as an annoyance who’s making them do something.

The bigger populations and communities get, and the more remotely everyone can work, the less likely it is you’ll deal with someone who has any interest, knowledge or fucks to give about you. I’m sure if these companies had to get it right for the boss’s friend, they’d magically become competent.