Tag Archives: rant

Customer dis-service

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I needed to update my home phone, internet, tv, and security contracts today. I also had to complain about an overpayment, some contracts ended but one didn’t, and prices went up for all. I was pretty sure fees could not rise mid-contract and I was correct. I called and chose to be called back rather than being put on hold for an estimated 30 minutes.

On the callback, the first person couldn’t deal with the refund, but I didn’t know that until about 35 minutes in, then I was put on hold and transferred. The second service agent put me on hold four times, twice for over 10 minutes. The call was one hour and thirty-four minutes long.

We pay a lot monthly for these services. I don’t mind the wait and callback, I do however think that renewing contracts and having them correct a mistake where they overcharged me should not take an hour and a half. I could feel my frustration mounting even before I got to the second agent.

Technology writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the word ‘enshittification’ to describe the predictable decline of many online platforms over time. I think I see this in customer service too. The first agent was so interested in upselling me and trying to keep me for a service I wanted to drop, that he neglected to tell me that he couldn’t deal with the refund. He was likely more focused on incentives for himself than service to me. The second agent didn’t have the authority to help me despite the first agent telling me she could, and so I was left waiting. I asked a secondary question that was again above her pay grade and had to wait again.

This feels like customer dis-service. I wasn’t served, I was dealt with. A nuisance to be put up with, to be made to wait. And let’s face it, AI agents aren’t going to make this process better for a long time. The companies that are going to be successful in the future are ones that truly put customers first… because they will be so rare that they will be a delight to deal with.

How did we do today?

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I went to my local drug store to pick up a prescription this morning. I walked in and stated my name, the pharmacist asked me my date of birth, then she went into a drawer,picked up my prescription, and handed it to me. I paid for it and left. Before I even got to my car I got a text:

Thanks for visiting [Drug Store Name]. How did we do today?

To rate your overall pharmacy experience, reply with a number 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. We appreciate the feedback!

I replied: STOP

…And received an unsubscribed notification text. But here is the thing: I never subscribed.

This evening I was sent an email from the same pharmacy titled, ‘How Did We Do?’, asking me to ‘Take a short Survey’.

I don’t remember when the line was crossed, but it has been crossed. You share personal information like your phone number and/or your email address, and companies believe it’s their right to contact you and ask for feedback or to promote products and sales. And the thing is you always end up giving them your phone number or your email because, for example, you need to become a member in order to get the sale price, and you can’t become a member without sharing these details.

I can understand asking me, ‘ How did we do today?’ If I spent 2 hours getting a service from you, or if I contacted customer service to help me solve a challenging problem. I get it if we’ve been through a two month process together. I can’t understand what you expect me to say about a 45 second interaction?

What meaningful data are you getting, and at what cost of annoyance to your customers?

I can’t pick up a prescription without being hounded for feedback on the transaction? I can’t read your website without accepting all cookies, and closing the window inviting me to subscribe to your newsletter? I can’t see your 1-minute news clip without viewing two fifteen second ads, the first of which I can’t skip and the second I have to wait 7 seconds to skip? I have to watch a 5 minute video where you spend 4 minutes telling me what you are going to tell me.

You want to help me? Stop this nonsense.

You want my feedback? Stop asking for so much feedback. Stop burying the lead behind advertising or behind a slow-burn audience retention strategy designed to evokes sunk cost feeling like, ‘Dang, I’ve listened for 4 minutes now, I’ve invested too long to miss the ending now.’ And stop asking for engagement (like, comment, subscribe) before you get to the point.

Just stop it… Please!

No Mercy

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I do not struggle with the idea of people having faith in an almighty being. In fact, I will defend anyone’s right to believe in the God of their choosing. We deserve religious freedoms and a choice to worship any deity we choose… or don’t choose as the case may be. Religion can be a powerful force of good in the world. I know a few very religious people, and they use their faith as a cornerstone for their integrity. They are honourable, respectable, good natured friends, neighbours, and citizens to their core.

I also see religious fanaticism as a significant problem in our world. A problem which fosters hate, and forces people into indoctrinated, evil beliefs. Beliefs which permits them to do unspeakable acts that are not only extremely harmful, but also an embarrassment to humanity.

Both of these can coexist simultaneously, across multiple religious beliefs. It’s not necessarily the religions themselves but misguided humans choosing to blindly follow interpretations of doctrine that bring out the worst in faith and humanity. And so the paradox of intolerance comes into play… we need to have intolerance for bad faith actors, while insuring we are remaining tolerant of good people of all faiths, even if especially if they are different than ours.

And this leaves me with two things for which I find myself less and less tolerant:

1. Uninvited preaching

There have been a few very public examples recently of people preaching their gospel on airplanes. They take advantage of a captive audience and without invitation decide that they will evangelize. I have the utmost tolerance and even acceptance of them believing what they want to believe, and I think they have every right to evangelize inside the confines of their church. But I’m intolerant of this idea of evangelizing to a captive audience who did not choose to listen but are stuck doing so.

Solution: Sing a song like ‘Row-Row-Row Your Boat’. Almost everyone knows the lyrics and people who don’t want to listen to preaching can easily join in and drown out the preacher (who is ultimately being rude). I understand that the singing wasn’t invited either, but I truly believe this is a lesser of two evils. The video examples demonstrate that even trying to complain permits these people to continue to evangelize, and then even claim religious persecution… making themselves out to be the victim rather than the social delinquents that they are. You can’t argue with fanatics, so just drown them out so no one can hear them.

2. Proclamations of God’s work

I’m not going to share the sources of the next examples, because like many of the commenters, (who are the reason these came across my feed), I have nothing kind to say about these posts. A reverend shared the image of a lone green house that withstood the horrific floods in Nepal, caused by the breaking up of a large glacier. His caption with the image said, “This house withstood all the flood challenge in Nepal. It’s all about the mercy of God and not necessarily the ingenuity of the Architectural work.”

What an ignorant and hateful thing to say.

Here is another example, this one came with a video showing the devastation all around the same green house, “I believe God decided to save them. It wasn’t because of the engineer who built the structure or because the structure was strong enough to protect them. I believe it was simply God’s intervention that kept them alive.”

So cruelly insensitive.

Thousands of people dead, many with no opportunity to escape the impending floodwaters. So many lives ended, so many more will continue to suffer in the coming months, and you brag about your god being merciful and saving one family, one house? It’s embarrassing that in a tragedy of this scale, this is where you see your god! The insensitivity is at a scale that can best be described as horrific. Imagine a Nepalese neighbour, who survived the flood, but lost family members, reading that post. I shudder to think of how hurtful it would be to see people praising their god for this.

Solution: I’ve already seen this in the comments. Ridicule anyone who praises the ‘God of the gaps’… call out the hypocrisy of thanking god for a shimmer of compassion in a river of devastation. If your all-powerful god is so selective in his mercy, he is vindictive, mean-spirited, and hateful. And if you are going to spew hurtful ignorance, you deserve the backlash that you get.

I struggle to not sound upset and angry when I share these ideas, but that’s the nature of the paradox of intolerance. We cannot extend tolerance to the intolerant, and religious zealots uninvitedly proselytizing or people seeing the hand of god amongst hurt and devastation is cruelty disguised as mercy. This is unacceptable, and we can’t sit by and let it happen. It’s not contributing to our society in any positive way… and it’s not what any kind, loving god would want.

Parents Today

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It’s a catchy title, ‘Parents Today’, an invite to go on a rant and share how society has changed and how parents are the problem. And, yes, this is a bit of a rant, but I want to start by saying this is a trend, not an issue with every parent… but it is indeed something I’ve seen more and more of.

That said, I’ve shared before, and I still believe that parents are our partners in education, and I believe it really does take a community to raise a child. And when we work together as educators and parents we can do great things. I’ve seen this in action. We had two sisters thrive at our school. One of them was able to train 20+ hours a week at her sport, still had time in Grade 12 to follow her passions, compose, produce, and sing an entire album of songs, and get high enough grades to get into the university program of her choice.

Her younger sister joined us and was quiet, and I wasn’t sure if she was enjoying herself. Then at the second PAC (Parent Advisory Council) meeting, her mom pulled me aside afterwards to have a private conversation. She got teary-eyed and thanked me and asked me to thank the teachers. She said that this was the first time in her younger daughter’s entire school experience that she wanted to go to school. She said school from preschool to grade 8 was joyless for her daughter, it was a chore to get her to school, and like pulling teeth to get her to say anything nice about her schooling.

She told me what a delight it was to see her daughter waking up and wanting to go to school. What a joy it was to have her come home and share what she was learning. How heartwarming it was to see her smile when she spoke about school. Her mom didn’t realize that this was equally heartwarming for me and my staff to hear.

We can get things right.

But in all honesty, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we can have challenges where a kid struggles and we have to work together to make things better. And again, when we approach challenges as a team, we can often make things better. Not always, but frequently… and this is where the rant sneaks in. I’ve noticed that it could be a lot more frequent if it wasn’t for (some) parents today.

We have parents that overshare information and humiliate their children in front of us. They embarrass their kids with private details that makes the kid feel too ashamed to look to educators for support and assistance.

We have parents that blame educators for a student not learning something. Who expect every possible accommodation for their child, and literally expect us to take the challenge out of learning. They fail to see that learning doesn’t stick when there is no effort associated with the process. They’ll watch their kid spend hours on a video game to perfect a level, then the same kid will put zero effort into an assignment and it’s the educator’s fault because he or she doesn’t understand how their kid learns.

We have parents who see themselves as their child’s friend and advocate, and will not parent them when they need a parent. They will let their child have a device in their room so they can play games or socialize until 3am, then claim it’s too hard to get them to school in the morning. ‘Turn off the wifi? Take their device away? We couldn’t do that.’ Make them go to school tired to understand the consequences of their actions? ‘Oh, no. My kid needs his rest, he’d be too upset if we did that.’

We have parents defend their child, claiming they did the work themselves, even when it’s obvious that they cheated or plagiarized. ‘Just so you know, I was sitting next to her when she wrote that.’ Actually lying to protect them like that is some sort of favour. It doesn’t matter that the child can’t define several of the words used, or that all other writing done in a supervised environment is both structurally different, and reads as if it was written by someone with a weaker vocabulary.

In each of these examples, the parent thinks they are doing their child a favour. They believe they are being advocates. Meanwhile, rather than working with educators to help their child, they are adversarial, confrontational, and/or passively harming their child by not being a parent.

The rise in number of parents I saw doing these kind of things in my last decade of education was concerning. Parents will spend more time getting Chat GPT to argue a case for their child’s ‘defence’ than they will actually parenting their child, or listening to a teacher. They will hear only their child’s perspective and come into the school with metaphorical guns blazing to defend them when the issue was minor and could have been resolved with a simple inquiry. They will send a scathing email to a teacher, realize there was a misunderstanding and then send a meek apology or no apology at all when the small concern is cleared up… Then they wonder why a teacher’s future communication to them doesn’t seem warm and caring… and claim that the teacher doesn’t like their kid.

As a principal, no matter how upset a parent was, I always started a meeting thinking, ‘We are on the same team, we both want what’s best for their child/our student.’ I’ve had hard conversations with teachers, students, and parents as a result of those conversations.

But the hardest conversations where with parents who I had to walk on eggshells around because their child, who was not being a good student, was being ruthlessly defended… And anything I said to suggest their kid had work to do was dealt with as evidence that a collective ‘we’, everyone at school, was at fault… Meanwhile I had a team of exasperated educators doing all they could with a supportive lens.

Schools can still work when there is a kid or two with parents like this, but I watched their number rise. I saw the pressure it put on educators… especially after the challenges of Covid. We are at a time when kids need the whole community to support them, and I’m seeing too many parents work against rather than with the school community.

It’s these kinds of parents that are one of the biggest problems in education today.

Recovery time

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I’m so frustrated dealing with injury recovery. I feel like I’m living my life in recovery mode.

Sciatic pain: 4 months of limited cardio, stopped my weekend walks for 5 weeks, and while now pain free, I am still coming back slowly so as not to trigger it again.

Golfer’s elbow: Ongoing. It reminds my that it’s still there every few days.

Teris major (the muscle behind the deltoid on my right shoulder): No idea how I injured it, but it stops me from getting a good night’s sleep, and has forced me to take it easy on all kinds of exercises to avoid pain.

My buddy is coaching me on keeping the weights I do down and focusing on good technique. I’m actually listening rather than being a stubborn fool who just pushes through pain like I’ve done for decades. But, dang, this is mentally tougher than actually pushing myself.

I’ve spent my athletic life being the underdog. I was the smallest kid being picked last on teams until Grade 10. Playing water polo and having the most inefficient swim stroke made me one of the slowest players in the pool… who had to work harder than anyone, with less rest, on every swim set.

I got accustomed to pushing hard to compensate for my shortcomings. What I lacked in talent I made up for with heart and effort. I learned how to push myself… hard! And now I know that this is not the way forward. Now I have to be smarter than to push through pain and injury. I need to be ok with showing up and doing the work that will protect me from future injuries rather than bring them on.

It’s so much easier to say than to do.

If I’m honest, this sucks. A few days ago I mentioned that I’d like to go one week injury free, I concluded in that post,

I’m reminded of the quote, ‘Choose your hard.’

When I’m sedentary my back aches. When I’m working out, different muscles choose to ache. Well, I guess I just have to choose my ache. Yet I’m actually not joking when I say, when I beg, can I please get one week ache free, just to know what that’s like.”

Being constantly in recovery mode is not the kind of hard I want, but it’s the kind of hard I have to face right now. Progress currently isn’t getting better or stronger, it’s not losing ground while I let my body heal. The trick is not to injure anything else in the process.

Daily aches

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I was joking with a buddy yesterday and said, “What I wouldn’t do to have one week with no part of my body aching.”

I dealt with sciatic pain from December to March. I’ve been dealing with golfer’s elbow almost as long and it pops back unexpectedly, even when I’m not using it much. And now, I’ve got a deltoid pain that is making it hard to sleep comfortably.

The sciatic pain has caused me to reduce my cardio goals. I’ve also been less focused on lifting heavy and my buddy is coaching me on both better form, and also pacing myself in the gym… things I can struggle with on my own. And still the aches and pains persist.

Granted, I’m not in agonizing pain every day with my back haunting my every move, like I was 20 years ago, and I’m in great shape… but the aches! I’m tired of alway feeling like I’m on the mend.

I’m reminded of the quote, ‘Choose your hard.’

When I’m sedentary my back aches. When I’m working out, different muscles choose to ache. Well, I guess I just have to choose my ache. Yet I’m actually not joking when I say, when I beg, can I please get one week ache free, just to know what that’s like.

Crappy user experience

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A bit of a rant here. I’m doing some medical expense claiming and my provider has an App that is not designed with the end user in mind. First I have to go to 3 different pages to make a claim. Then after all the claim details are entered, I have to scroll down on a confirmation page that has my address on individual lines that take up to much screen real-estate that the ‘Consent and Declaration’ is hidden under the ‘Submit’ button. So you end up hitting the Submit button only then to learn that you need to scroll down and click the consent, which opens up in another page.

Also, I use my laptop and phone for much of the day and don’t need reading glasses, but my pharmacy prints the details I need to make the above claim in tiny, hard to read font. This is so unnecessary. It’s already really confusing trying to locate all the information, which is spread out into 3 different sections of the prescription receipt, does it also need to be in microscopic font? This is the only thing I’ve had to put reading glasses on to see in the last few months.

I get tired of user interfaces that are designed for the product and not the user. The insurance company probably doesn’t want to claims to be easy to do, they’d rather you had to go through a more challenging process to make a claim. The pharmacy changed their format so that the prescription receipt gets printed on a small sticker, and I’m sure cost saving was more important to them than providing a readable receipt for their aging customers. And this kind of behaviour may or may not be intentional, but it is ignorant of the end user’s experience. I’ve complained before about inconsistencies in remote controls, apps that want your attention at the cost of your convenience, and how it feels like we are decades behind where we should be when doing things like setting up a new printer. I would say that over 95% of the things I rant about are related to products and services providing crappy user experiences.

How hard would it be to have the customer in mind as a priority, rather than an afterthought?

Avoid this, try this, buy this

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I am getting sick and tired of social media ads these days. They are following a recipe designed to make you less knowledgeable, more stressed, and frankly dumber. Here are the two main formulas, or should I say ingredients, in these tasteless ads:

Either:

“Don’t eat these 3 items that are killing you.” Followed by a list that includes seed oils, or certain nuts, or another common item in your kitchen. Before plugging a product, or casually naming a name brand item while suggesting alternatives.

Or:

“Doctors hate me.” Followed by an exercise program or diet that has made the person ultra fit without ‘traditional’ medicines and practices. What,you need is our callisthenics program, Tai Chi, ‘Just 9 minutes a day’, or the Butt Blaster 3000.

It’s ‘Avoid this – it’s killing you!’ And then a product plug. Or it’s ’Transform your body, it’s easier than you think… if you buy into what I’m selling.’

And none of these are 30 seconds long. They are all longer format where they attempt to suck you in, feeling invested in the video for a minute or two before the secret to a better or healthier you is revealed.

But there is no real science behind what is claimed. Or worse yet, there are some factual aspects that are proven but irrelevant. “Did you know that ingredient XYZ in product ABC causes cancer?’ You didn’t, so you watch the video. But what isn’t shared is that the dangerous amount of that item would be 10,000 times the dose you would get from eating product ABC… and it only ever showed a link to cancer when that massive dose was fed to mice for continuous days or weeks.

These ads scare you with ‘facts’ that aren’t actually scary, or make promises that a program or product will change your life with a sample size of one person who is telling you how ‘This worked for me and it will work for you too’.

Fear and false promises are being sold on a grand scale and this formula is just showing up more and more. I guess from the amount of ads like this that I’ve seen, the formula is working.

(I’m sure everyone who tries Tia Chi looks like this at 62! 🤦‍♂️)

Extra sauce please

This is a bit of a rant.

I hate ordering food and it comes with a tiny side of sauce. It’s annoying. Would it really be too expensive to add what would be 5-10 cents more sauce on a $15-25 dish?

When waiters walk by can they not see that I’m on my 2nd of 5 chicken fingers and I’m already scraping the bottom of the puny sauce container? Do I really have to ask for more?

When I’m at the bottom of the salad and I’m eating dressing-less lettuce, do you think I’m enjoying my meal? When I’m scraping the last tiny streaks of raspberry purée from an almost perfectly white plate to add a tiny morsel of the flavour to my last bite of cheesecake, am I thinking about how wonderful my final bite is going to taste?

I’m a saucy guy… give me the sauce, don’t make me ask.

Thank you!

It should be getting easier, but it isn’t

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that we live in the 21st-century. It should be getting easier, but it isn’t. All of our schools just got new photocopy machines, and there is a one hour video tutorial to learn how to use them. More videos and instructions are required, if you are the one who is doing any kind of basic maintenance like replacing the toner.

Related to this, when was the last time you bought a new TV and you instantly knew how to use the remote? I find incredible irony that there is nothing universal about a universal remote control. I don’t know, call me crazy, but I would think that in this day and age the tools we use would get simpler to use, not more complicated.

Borrow a friend’s car and try to fill the gas tank and you’re left puzzled as to where the release is for the gas tank’s door. Go to the gas station and there’s a process to get your rewards card punched in, because you don’t have room in your wallet for 17 rewards program cards. Try to connect your phone to that same borrowed car, and you’re worried that you’re going to have to cancel another users profile. Or you are faced with a touch screen menu that just doesn’t make intuitive sense.

How is it that the user interface of almost everything we do now is more complicated than necessary? Why is it that every single place we go to online we’re expected to login or create an account, or at the very least close one or two pop-up invitations to do so? i’m looking at a website for 30 seconds, to find out one piece of information, do I really need to decide whether or not I want to accept cookies?

My microwave has a touch dial where I have to spin my finger in a circle to get to the appropriate time. I don’t think I can ever hit the time I want without toggling back-and-forth. This takes me significantly longer than if I had to punch three number keys on a touchpad and hit ‘Start’. There is nothing convenient about this. And that’s my point…

We live in an era when things should be getting a lot easier, user interfaces should be intuitive and natural to use, but instead everything seems to be getting a little more difficult. I just don’t get it.