What do you do when you feel helpless? What if you are stuck in a loop where you can't get through to the people running the show?
You decide you need to shake things up.
Today's Guest Post came to me with a warning that it wasn't "blog worthy." It was a rant, he said. Not analysis of anything.
Jeff Lowenfels wrote after spending some eight hours, mostly on hold, in the frustrating phone-tree loops where the voice says to press a button to go back to the main menu. He wrote that the experience gave him better understanding of why many Americans voted for Trump in 2016, and voted for him again in 2020.
Jeff Lowenfels |
A reverie, a rant, and an empathetic insight.
Guest Post by Jeff Lowenfels
Whole CNN and MSNBC shows are dedicated to trying to find the answer. The Atlantic and The New Yorker struggle with it. What we get is advice on how to how to listen more carefully to them, how to empathize with them, and to be very careful casting personal blame on them for the disaster the Trump presidency has been to rules, to norms, to laws. But look at what Trump is doing right now. He told his co-conspirators he would pardon them if they kept mum or lied under oath to protect him; they did; and now he's pardoning them! What more do you have to do to destroy a system of laws?
We argue about a future for Trumpism with or without Trump himself. It has become a sport. We forget that we should be looking for why people supported Trump and, more important, why some still do, after everything.
I was not thinking about the Trump issue as I reviewed my AT&T bill and found a number attributed to me. I am paying for a number I didn’t even know I had. And for some reason my voicemail stopped working. So, I did what anyone would do. I called AT&T.
I dialed. I could not get a live voice. All I got was the same recording of music and a whole lot of advertising for Direct TV and a public service request about Not looking at your phone while you drive. AGGGGGHJHHHHHHHHHHH. Over and over and over, telling me to stand by. Hour one. Hour two. These are the very same voice messages they must use on Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
After the third hour of trying to get a live person on the line, I didn’t think of “Friends;" I thought of Nashville and the bomb in front of the AT&T building. (I’m joking. Really. If the FBI is monitoring this blog don’t come after me.) I am just saying I know why the AT&T building might have been a target of a crazy trying to get attention. Three hours on hold!
Suddenly, Trump’s election became clear to me. What do folks want to do when things don’t work? How can they get meaningful help when you don’t have the time, the energy, or the smarts to ask the damn Artificial Intelligence voice mail machine loop the right question?
Over the past 15 years or so people have been replaced by machines and AI and voice mails and recorded messages. You can’t get a real person! And darn right people get angry, because the modern world has stopped working for them. The system sometimes meets the needs of the people who made the system--for AT&T, or the people who run or own AT&T, or the government, but not you and me. We want solutions, not loops that pull us back into the very system that isn't working. ATT is a metaphor for the big, impersonal, frustrating everything-system. The government. An economic system that is depressing wages. The healthcare system. The child care system. The immigration system.
OK, so, along comes a guy who says the government is a swamp. He points this out in ways you can relate to. Not enough water pressure in the shower? Can’t use hairspray? Can’t mine in a park? (if I hadn’t been brain damaged by those damn AT&T ads, I would give you better examples, but those were the kinds of idiotic things Trump complains about.) And his audiences related. Yeah, those little frustrations. Like the AT&T phone loop.
I spent another two hours with this group, having convinced them I am an AT&T shareholder and was really upset. They took pity on me. They weren’t able to fix my voice mail, though, and when they put me on hold to get tech help, I ended up in the AT&T dance line again, with the same music and ads.
Determined now to solve the problem, I dialed 611 about 200 times and tried to get the AI to understand I wanted to speak to someone LIVE. Whether I came up with the right words or it was just my random turn, finally, it happened. It took the AT&T tech 35 minutes to fix a problem I know half a million people must have.
Artificial Intelligence phone-menu hell is just the kind of experience that might cause someone to vote for Trump. He isn’t a nice guy, or good at managing or building things, but he knows how to get angry, and that’s something Americans can relate to.
To destroy is easier than to create.
ReplyDeleteI’m with Jeff.
ReplyDeleteYou say the coastal elites pushed globalization and destroyed your local economy? Hang here on infinite hold while we play you cheerful messages about learning to code and how to stop being so racist.
* When I run into one of these voicemail systems, I just say “agent” or “representative” in response to every prompt. Sometimes it works.
Trump is a New York City real estate billionaire. How much more of a coastal elite can one be?
ReplyDeleteGreat Job!
ReplyDeleteThe new frustration is once you have managed to create an identity and a password typed twice, you then have to receive a verification code sent to your email or phone then enter it in capitals to get a result , but then you are asked to find the pictures that have traffic lights and don’t forget to write down your password before you forget it , but then the dog eats the password book in the morning. Or how about a live chat with some lady called Roxie from the Phillipines who leaves you with a blinking screen while “she” researches your problem finally tells you that you get your refund in 10 - 15 days from now and then asks for you to participate in a 5 minute survey. Like going to a big box store where the clerk cannot answer one question about the quality of the product. Oh well...
Again thanks.