Technology is not designed to make your life easier. You know this. You know this on a subconscious level. Or maybe you know this on an unconscious level.
But you know this... on some level.
We (you and me) now have figured it out. There is no intentions of this advancement in computer technology and AI etc to make our lives easier. "Our lives" meaning the consumer's life (you and me). The vendor aka the seller could care less about you, the customer.
Instead the goal is to make THEIR lives easier. To make the flow of good and services through their operations smooth as melted ice cream on the Fourth of July.
In a recent conversation some folks said they went into a fast food place to order food and there was no one visible anywhere. They could hear people in the back. The kiosks where there to take their order. Only one worked. If you had a question or wanted to talk to a human you were out of luck. Use the technology or go home.
Want to pay with cash. Not happening. Is that convenient for you or for them?
I had a similar experience in a Manatee Park in Florida. It was a cold day so everyone knew that the manatee would be in the warm water that comes for springs. In this case the warm water comes from a nuclear power plant. Not very natural, but the manatee didn't mind.
We pulled into the parking lot and people were everywhere. They were crossing the road in front of the truck making it hard to move forward. I let Pam out at the entrance because she doesn't walk well and going very far is not easy for her.
There were some gaggles of old people around long metal poles. I had no idea what they were doing. They just looked stupid. Staring up at the top of these poles that seemed scattered at "hither and yon" in the parking lot.
The Manatee Park had run out of place to park so people were parking in a nearby overflow field. It was random parking.
Random. Like throw everything up in the air and see where it lands. That kind of random.
It was surely going to result in some clown parking his car in an open space which is (or was) the unmarked exit.
Some dumb lady was taking a picture of the back of a car.
So I parked the truck and hoped we'd be able to get out again. I felt that knot in my stomach that said something, but I wasn't sure what it was, except to say it wasn't good.
I started to walk out of the parking lot and I was intrigued as to why all these old people were paying homage to these poles. So I stopped to look. At the top of these metal poles was a sign that you had to pay to park. Pay or risk getting towed. So all these people were trying to figure out how to pay.
So I joined them and began to feel bad for thinking less of them that I should have. (Again I realized how dumb I am.)
You were supposed to scan a QR Code to get started. I did that.
Then you had to download software. Okay, I did that.
Then you had to establish an account. Use your email. Okay fine.
Create a password. Create a password? My computer does that for me now and stores it in some vault on mars in a language unknown to humans. So now I have to create a password that I can remember. So I did the best I could.
Now tell us the make, model, color, license number and state you are from. Then I remembered thinking about the lady taking a picture of the back of the car. It was her car. She was getting her license number. She wasn't so dumb after all. (It was me who was dumb.)
I don't know my license plate number. Maybe I'll just put in the State and it will take it????
I did that and it worked! (?)
Okay now at the screen to pay. Enter your credit card number.
ERROR!!!!
No idea where the error was.
Start over.
Same result.
So I just gave up and went into the park.
Now I knew why the crowds were so large around these poles and why people were going back to their cars to stare at the back. They hoped top temporarily remember their plate numbers.
We didn't stay long because I was worried we would get towed and / or we would never get our of the lot because people were parking sideways, frontwards, backwards, parallel, parallelogram, inter-dimensionally; so that we might have to wait until all the manatee left for open water before we could leave.
The other reason we left is that the crowd was so large you couldn't walk up to the fence to peer over to see those lumps of flesh called manatee.
In that same trip to Florida I tried parking in other lots. They used the same QC are code method for parking but each city or county used a different vendor for the service to collect parking tolls.
We went to downtown Fort Myers. We (we meaning me) had to scan the QR code. Create an account. Email. Password. Car information. enter credit card number. All done. Great now just hit the button to pay!!!!
I was so happy that I did this one right! Success. I'm not so dumb after all (maybe).
And the final message was...
It's after 5 o'clock. No payment necessary.
This generation of technology is for the convenience of the seller they have left the customer out of the equation.
Customer Service is not dead. This new generation of vendors does not recognize it as an entity. It isn't a thing to be considered. Their goal is the efficient use of resources... their resources. If you have to expend your resources to obtain their goods or services, they are just fine with that.
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