21–30 of 51 posts
Wild speculation: Customer service, support, and other direct interactions are difficult to scale. Large corporations tend to optimize direct-contact positions for cost and speed over quality. This act of endlessly “optimizing staff time” to control costs inevitably ends up with people rushing through things in order to satisfy an unforgiving productivity algorithm. Consolidation/competition displaces local businesse…
In the past, whatever you needed done, was done through human action even if they used machines. So there was a good chance that somewhere along the way, there would be someone who'd notice and check/fix, or at least would be able to help you when things go wrong.
But with increased automation, every mistake is amplified and carried to completion much more efficiently -- and the humans you can talk to are often minimum wage people who are not very familiar and are not authorized to modify anything about the processing stages. There are 1/100 or 1/1000 as many people who can actually help you as there were 40 years ago -- and by that I mean actually help you, that is - fix wrong data, override automated processes, etc; not just read from a script.
I'm not even that smart, but heck I have a college degree and for me I had to stop assuming others had the best of intentions and / or were as smart as I was. When you just double check and clarify when appropriate - you can avoid dumb pitfalls like this.
For instance, "Here's my bank acct number, can you confirm this is the number you are submitting for the request?" or "thank you officer, I would like to ensure we are on the same page, I understand you underlined this check box, but I'd like to have a new slip without the underline".
Interacting with morons sucks, but if you put a bit of effort into these things, in time you might avoid wasted time or anxiety.
None of this sounds any different from thirty years ago. And the interaction with law enforcement sounds like high competency it’s just that high competency doesn’t look like what you thought it did. Generally I find greater competency on average. I just accept that a person can be competent at doing something I don’t like.
The seemingly innocuous mistakes of morons in society will always cause immeasurable amounts of pain both through wasted time and anxiety. I'm not even that smart, but heck I have a college degree and for me I had to stop assuming others had the best of intentions and / or were as smart as I was. When you just double check and clarify when appropriate - you can avoid dumb pitfalls like this. For instance, "Here's my…
No, I notice increased competence. So much I depend on the competence others have which I myself don't. Everything from getting a haircut, to calibrating the ventilation in my apartment, to politicians holding speeches.
Curious about this. I can count on one hand the politicians I truly admire/respect, including the world leaders (among the ones I am familiar with, and I am familiar with a few). Why do you think politicians are getting better with speeches? All I see are useless, meaningless, confusing soup of words that they blabber (with few exceptions)
The seemingly innocuous mistakes of morons in society will always cause immeasurable amounts of pain both through wasted time and anxiety. I'm not even that smart, but heck I have a college degree and for me I had to stop assuming others had the best of intentions and / or were as smart as I was. When you just double check and clarify when appropriate - you can avoid dumb pitfalls like this. For instance, "Here's my…
It is tolerable most of the time, except when it comes to powerful jobs like cops/doctors/lawyers etc where even a small mistake can wreck someone's life. I had a colleague whose lawyer made a mistake while filing paperwork. He lost his visa and move back to his home country, all because a lawyer (well paid one at that) couldn't bother to do simple paper work correctly. I don't know if it was incompetence or I don't care attitude, my colleague's life is ruined either way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I feel like if I was this bad at my job I'd be fired in an instant..." Yes! I look at these other jobs and think how great it would be to work in a position that had no accountability.
I think that’s probably impostor syndrome working. My bet is that a lot of people could be significantly worse at their jobs without the system detecting it