I Had to Laugh...

[Loyal]

I think we all hate "automated assistants." Nine years ago, my wife and I submitted paperwork to get my adopted daughter a hearing to become a US citizen. She was an exchange student as a Senior in High School in Kansas and we assisted her in getting accepted to a local University, in which she earned a BA and MA in Business. She is somewhat of a star in her own country (Republic of Georgia) and is often on the news there for humanitarian/business exploits. She speaks English, Russian, German fluently and would be an asset in our country. Many of the foreign students at University urged her to not go back to Georgia after graduation and to stay here illegally. She listened to us, because we told her she should go back to Georgia and do it the right way

Boy, were we wrong.

Russia invaded and now controls part of Georgia as of a few years ago. The danger is ever present that they will invade and conquer the rest of Georgia . She fears that she will become trapped there. Anyway, that's the urgency as to why we are trying get her and her family (she's married now with 4 kids) out of there.

Going back to the automated assistant for the government, when do they really answer the questions that you have? We have learned to say over and over, "talk to human being." Normally after multiple attempts you are put on hold to talk to somebody. Half the time, your call is dropped and so you have to call back to start the whole process again. We called this morning to talk to someone about this 9 year old application whose status is still classified as being "received" after all of these years.

My wife asked to talk to human being and the automated assistant said, "You can't be helped by a human being. Can I help you with anything else?"
My wife continued to ask for a human being.
It responded, "If you continue to ask for a human being, I will have to disconnect this call. Can I help you with anything else?"
My wife responded, "No you cannot, I need to talk to a human being."
It then said, "You were warned, goodbye"...and the damned thing disconnected.

My wife relayed what it was saying in real time and was frustrated and I couldn't help myself. I started laughing uncontrollably. It hit me that programmers realized that people had been trained to bypass similar automated assistants by asking for a human being in similar situations and were nominally successful. It was so common that they programmed the damn thing to say what it did to my wife. It's an admission that their customer service is an abject failure and the assistant is a buffer against its customers. Demoralizing and discouraging people who question governmental incompetence seems to be its true purpose.

The cynicism of it all made me laugh. Do you have any similar experiences that reveal the present day cynical nature of our society?

 

[norcalramfan]

I think we all hate "automated assistants." Nine years ago, my wife and I submitted paperwork to get my adopted daughter a hearing to become a US citizen. She was an exchange student as a Senior in High School in Kansas and we assisted her in getting accepted to a local University, in which she earned a BA and MA in Business. She is somewhat of a star in her own country (Republic of Georgia) and is often on the news there for humanitarian/business exploits. She speaks English, Russian, German fluently and would be an asset in our country. Many of the foreign students at University urged her to not go back to Georgia after graduation and to stay here illegally. She listened to us, because we told her she should go back to Georgia and do it the right way

Boy, were we wrong.

Russia invaded and now controls part of Georgia as of a few years ago. The danger is ever present that they will invade and conquer the rest of Georgia . She fears that she will become trapped there. Anyway, that's the urgency as to why we are trying get her and her family (she's married now with 4 kids) out of there.

Going back to the automated assistant for the government, when do they really answer the questions that you have? We have learned to say over and over, "talk to human being." Normally after multiple attempts you are put on hold to talk to somebody. Half the time, your call is dropped and so you have to call back to start the whole process again. We called this morning to talk to someone about this 9 year old application whose status is still classified as being "received" after all of these years.

My wife asked to talk to human being and the automated assistant said, "You can't be helped by a human being. Can I help you with anything else?"
My wife continued to ask for a human being.
It responded, "If you continue to ask for a human being, I will have to disconnect this call. Can I help you with anything else?"
My wife responded, "No you cannot, I need to talk to a human being."
It then said, "You were warned, goodbye"...and the damned thing disconnected.

My wife relayed what it was saying in real time and was frustrated and I couldn't help myself. I started laughing uncontrollably. It hit me that programmers realized that people had been trained to bypass similar automated assistants by asking for a human being in similar situations and were nominally successful. It was so common that they programmed the damn thing to say what it did to my wife. It's an admission that their customer service is an abject failure and the assistant is a buffer against its customers. Demoralizing and discouraging people who question governmental incompetence seems to be its true purpose.

The cynicism of it all made me laugh. Do you have any similar experiences that reveal the present day cynical nature of our society?

A few weeks ago the cable contract with the NFL Network expired ( on screen message) and I called to enquire. This fell under the category of "cable line up" and the automated response was that could be answered online. I ended up yelling at the machine and it relented and connected me to a person. I talked to 3 or 4 different people, none of whom knew what was going on. A few hours later the contract was signed and it came back on. Moral of the story--- Yell next time.

 

[Loyal]

The next situation is something I am still trying to process. Since the pandemic began, until now, businesses lost their focus on customer service. I live in a really small town and the place we go to shop (going to town) has only about 28,000 people. The principal mega-store in town is a Super Walmart. Besides the Aldis, there is no reasonable place to shop for groceries in town. Before the pandemic, it was a 24 hour store, which was great for us. My wife and I worked odd hours and so sometimes it was convenient to go shopping at 1am. Fewer people and a lot of stockers blocking aisles while they did their job was no big deal.
Now?
The store closes at 10pm and reopens at 6am. This means they are stocking the shelves all day, blocking aisles and frustrating the mass of people trying to shop and get out of there. One thing that I used to love about Walmart was the wide aisles, as compared to Kmart, along with store employees ready and willing to help. Remember, this is a small town and so you are liable to run into people you know in the store and these conversations often block aisles that are already clogged. Then there are parents and kids talking to other parents with kids, who seem absolutely oblivious that people need to get by them. These things were minor annoyances before the pandemic, can now be infuriating because the store won't go back to a 24 hour operation. It's like they decided that since their customers had no good alternatives, the façade of caring for the customer was ripped away.

The other example is the local Applebee's. I know you fancy folks have all sorts of options for a nice dinner out, but the only big chain sports bar/restaurant is Applebee's in this town. Pre-pandemic, it was a light cheery place with music playing in the background. It felt special to go there on a weekend. We went there a couple times after businesses started opening up again, but it was bad. The whole atmosphere of the place was different. No music and it seemed darker. The food presentation was horrific in disposable containers. The food we used to enjoy, looked like it had been microwaved The petals were off the rose, as it were. A year later we tried it again, and it still wasn't great. The food presentation was better, but the atmosphere was dark and uninviting, which is a shame. Applebee's was a place we went to almost every week, but we longer have any desire to go there.

 

[Tano]

The next situation is something I am still trying to process. Since the pandemic began, until now, businesses lost their focus on customer service. I live in a really small town and the place we go to shop (going to town) has only about 28,000 people. The principal mega-store in town is a Super Walmart. Besides the Aldis, there is no reasonable place to shop for groceries in town. Before the pandemic, it was a 24 hour store, which was great for us. My wife and I worked odd hours and so sometimes it was convenient to go shopping at 1am. Fewer people and a lot of stockers blocking aisles while they did their job was no big deal.
Now?
The store closes at 10pm and reopens at 6am. This means they are stocking the shelves all day, blocking aisles and frustrating the mass of people trying to shop and get out of there. One thing that I used to love about Walmart was the wide aisles, as compared to Kmart, along with store employees ready and willing to help. Remember, this is a small town and so you are liable to run into people you know in the store and these conversations often block aisles that are already clogged. Then there are parents and kids talking to other parents with kids, who seem absolutely oblivious that people need to get by them. These things were minor annoyances before the pandemic, can now be infuriating because the store won't go back to a 24 hour operation. It's like they decided that since their customers had no good alternatives, the façade of caring for the customer was ripped away.

The other example is the local Applebee's. I know you fancy folks have all sorts of options for a nice dinner out, but the only big chain sports bar/restaurant is Applebee's in this town. Pre-pandemic, it was a light cheery place with music playing in the background. It felt special to go there on a weekend. We went there a couple times after businesses started opening up again, but it was bad. The whole atmosphere of the place was different. No music and it seemed darker. The food presentation was horrific in disposable containers. The food we used to enjoy, looked like it had been microwaved The petals were off the rose, as it were. A year later we tried it again, and it still wasn't great. The food presentation was better, but the atmosphere was dark and uninviting, which is a shame. Applebee's was a place we went to almost every week, but we longer have any desire to go there.

You need to move