It's impossible to list all the bizarre things in this world, nor that I'm trying to. Here's just one little example. Remember back in the days when tech support actually had engineers on the line? Seems like forever ago, but really no earlier than 5 years ago I talked to engieers on phone and computer via tech support lines. Everytime I described the problem or my request, the tech support immediately knew that I was technology literate, and within a few minutes we would get things down.
It's no longer the case. Now all you get from calling tech support is some "trained" CSR to answer you questions. But for heaven's sake, you don't train some random people a few days and expect they can accomplish anything. It's just absurd. Since today's tech support is full of people who know nothing but get a quick training and think they are engineers, they think everybody is dumber than they were before. So not only I have to listen their stupid "solutions", but also I need to use layman's terms to explain where the problems are, and hope they can ask their supervisor, hopefully a real engineer, to get the answers.
Let me give an example. I was having some problem with Live Calendar on my phone a while ago. I had an answer but just needed to verify it (hoping I was wrong), so I called AT&T. It took me 5 minutes to explain that it's not a calendar app downloaded from the market, but Live Calendar on Windows Phone. But still the first solution the person gave me was to download a different app, which I guess that's the first answer on the handbook he was reading. The whole mess lasted another 20 minutes, yeah I had time that day, I finally lost patience and asked him to transfer my call to somebody who knows what he/she's doing. Then another person who didn't know what he was doing, and I had to repeat everything, but that time I got a Microsoft number. I called it, still the same thing, except the guy asked his supervisor, and that real engineer had the answer for me, which was the initial guess I had. All I needed was a simple line of "yes, there's nothing you can do with the current version but hopefully the next update would fix the bug" or "no, actually there is a way to fix it", but it took talking directly to 2 morons and indirectly to 1 engineer to get the 5-minute-answer.
This makes me appreciate my other experience more. I missed an important call one day. The cellphone tower was down so failed to connect my phone to the network. I was enraged so I called AT&T. Just for the record, I was still polite. The CSR apologized transferred me to tech support so that they could find out the reason and prevent it from happening again. The tech support girl asked me the issue (here's another thing), and I explained. I asked her if there's solar flair, which she checked and said no. She studied web engineering so she had enough knowledge to do the job as well as to know that I'm not an idiot. So while she gave me a few possible causes, and I ruled out them all. Now there's only one answer, which was the tower was down. She checked, bingo. She told me how to be registered with the other tower, mission accomplished.
So here this other thing I really hate. Now you get to be transferred at least 1 or 2 times beore talking to the right person, and between each transfer they can never provide any information to the next person. Like that Live Calendar thing, the second person I talked to thought I was having trouble with some random calendar app. It's either the first agent failed to diliver the message, or the second agent couldn't comprehend, or both.
There's a reason why you need engineers to do certain things, you just can't replace them. But people seems never learn. And this is just one example of how bizarre this world has become. True it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it really is. Under the name of cost control or anything else fancy, they put unqualified people to do professional jobs that eventually cost the whole society more. We have a horse show host to run FEMA, a cellphone salesman to be the Secretary of Defense, and a politician with 0 executive background to run the country. These are all the same mentality, and people wonder why we are in a mess. Now that's bizarre.
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