If you’re not in the mood to be annoyed, Go Away.
There, I’ve said it. Consider yourself forewarned.
Do you hate stupid people as much as I do? First, let me define stupid people: They are those people who we need to deal with on a daily basis who see it as their function to keep us from doing simply what we need to do. You know who they are: The employee at that government office who has created all sorts of different-sized hoops for you to jump through, no matter that several of the hoops are not of the size that any normal person can jump through. The software programmer at your health insurance company who wrote an infinite loop into the program that you must use, such that every time you try to inquire about an EOB* you don’t understand, you end up back on the same screen that asks you what information you’re looking for. It’s that darn person at the phone company who programmed their automatic phone service menus such that you have to go through four levels before they tell you that, in fact, there is no human there who is going to help you.
* Did you know what an EOB was before you became a parent? I didn’t. I just shredded all that stuff that came from the health insurance. Didn’t understand it, didn’t need it. Never suspected that one day I would have an EOB file and I would eagerly search each one that came in to find all the mistakes, the ways that they would thwart my attempts at a simple, straightforward existence!
Those stupid people who could help you are all at the tiki bar, sipping mai tais.
This is today’s situation, but really, do the details matter? This will sound very familiar to you, I’m guessing: My husband and I went on a much-needed three-day vacation so that we could actually look at each other. As any parents of a special needs child can tell you, we need a break. Our child is not diagnosably “special needs” — there’s no IEP or insurance code available for her — but I can assure you she has special needs. I’m not saying our lives are as difficult as couples who have a severely autistic child. But just that like them, we need breaks in order to remember why we’re doing this in the first place. We hadn’t really had a real break since she was born, and this one took a lot of planning. I had to schedule it down to the minute: enrolling her sainted babysitter (who has since gone and gotten herself a real job, which I very much encouraged and which I may not survive!), my mother and sister (their fault for being related to me!), her school (may they continue to get funding for generations to come), and a friend (who acts like it’s no big deal to take charge of my wonderful, difficult, energetic, annoying, creative, brilliant being).
In other words, this was no small feat of Home Engineering.
While we went on this much-needed vacation, at some gas station or restaurant or even the fancy resort we stayed at, we willingly handed our credit card to someone who copied down the information and called his friend in Houston. Two days later, the credit card company called us — “Have you been trying to use your card all around the Houston area and getting declined?” — and we had to cancel the card.
OK, add the guy who stole our credit card number to the list of people I hate.
So we had to get a whole new credit card number, and if this has happened to you in this modern economy, you know what’s coming next: Did I have time to remember every single business that had our credit card number and was charging our fees to it? Well,… I thought about it at least. And thought I’d have at least a few weeks, and promptly forgot about it.
Back to the phone company and why I hate people who thwart my simple needs. All I need is to change the darn credit card information on our AT&T account. Do you think I am able to do this? Do you think I can make gold shimmer down from the sky and into our bank account?
No: That programmer who did their phone system? Didn’t bother to program it so that I find out in advance of the many times I have to answer questions and be misunderstood by their voice recognition system that they are actually closed and are actually not planning on answering any question I may have. And while they’re closed, did it occur to them that this is not the best time for them to bring down their online computer system so I can’t check my account from the Web and see if my request to change the credit card to which they charge my phone lines has gone through? Has it occurred to them that there are many, many people who have much, much more complicated lives than I who burst into tears upon receiving, yet again, the information that their quest to change their credit card information has been thwarted?
OK, I will admit to you that I know that these people aren’t stupid, or even mean. It’s the system they work within that makes them act stupid and mean. I don’t think about the evil computer programmer, rubbing his hands together and chuckling as he makes sure that I will get stuck in his infinite loop. I don’t blame the bored woman who finally answers the phone and sighs, slowly, heavily, audibly, when I ask to speak to her manager. I don’t blame the manager who decided that they would save money if they made sure to route callers through six different voice-recognized levels of the program before being told that, in fact, there is no human being available to talk to.
They are all just doing their jobs.
But as a [always working on being a] well-read person, I can’t help but think of our sages: Kafka, Orwell… I’m so annoyed no one else comes to mind but a few more could be inserted here. All these people who told us what was going to happen, and we blithely progressed along the road to Progress.
Heck, it was probably really annoying back in the day when you had to call the Operator to place a call and she knew all your business. But she was there! After she was done connecting you to your sister and listened in on your telling your sister about the awful fight you had with your husband, she took off her headphone and walked down the street to the cafe and you could say, “Hey, Julie. Who do I talk to about paying my bill in a different way?” and she could tell you who the person was.
But here we are.
Back in the day, being a mom didn’t get much respect. But given our present situation, I suggest that we get a title. We are not homemakers or stay-at-home moms, we are Home Engineers. We get capital letters. We get kudos from company management when we take the time to point out their infinite loops. We use our Stanford educations to get really, really pissed off and blog about why being a Home Engineer is a thankless, difficult job. We blog about it, for next to no money at all (because the people who read our blogs are cool people like us, who don’t click on the darn links because really, we don’t care about the big corporations that advertise on our Google ads and we buy pretty much everything from our farmer’s market and our local co-op anyway)…
Oh, darn. I’ve used up all this time to complain and I still have bills to pay and three more companies to tell that some dweeb in a restaurant we went to while we were trying to get away so that we could actually talk to each other stole our credit card number and sold it to his friend in Houston…
