WTF Is Wrong With Lazy, Incompetent People?

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

On 4/27/2022 at 4:47 PM, Link said:

Or be anywhere near the level to make that happen. You enter a bugfix request, it'll often sit for six months or more, and then just go away with no (visible) action taken.

That actually happened with a Minecraft bug that crippled my ability to use skins.  It sat for like 2-3 weeks, then was marked "in progress" but no notes or anything else, so I let it go another 2-3 weeks then basically started lighting up the comments for it only to be told that oh, even though it was claimed and marked in progress, that didn't mean anybody was working on it, and we wouldn't have any idea when that was taking place because that was only marked on the internal ticket system.  As if Mojang employees handling the bug report database were somehow not empowered to actually make the status that regular folks can see match what they're doing internally.  Suddenly, right after that, the externally facing ticket got closed, then within 24 hours there was an auto update that actually fixed the issue, so I have an issue I might have been fibbed to slightly and rattling my cup against their bars lit a fire under someone, lol.

But yeah, it's perfectly normal for front line folks to open a ticket, then have the folks who are supposed to look at it sit on it for months, then arbitrarily close it, without comment, or correction.

[ICrappedMyPants | 302]

Just got another recall notice on the car we donated in 2020. Maybe my third call to the American Honda line on the notice will actually stop these letters. This is incompetence!

[Tanooki | 4,932]

A ford we had a year ago that failed due to their own incompetent duratec(look up the perpetual lawsuits they dodge on google somehow) engine design still gets recall notices too that won't stop, and now they're packing it in more threatening at first glance envelopes and lettering like we'll get in trouble.  Car is gone, not registered to us, was sold to a scrap yard, yet...idle nonsense junk mail.

[Boosted52405 | 178]

I've found the older I get the realization that a massive percentage (90%+) of the workforce out there, care very very little about their performance on the job, or providing patience/care/comfort to customers.  It seems to be rare to connect with a worker or representative that actually will take the time to take care of you.

I think this is a generational thing sadly, with every business and practice out there being so cut throat just to survive.  Customers are just beans being counted sort of thing.  Workers tend to be more checklist and task driven with the relentless pursuit of pushing volume and meeting quotas.  Automations and software are pushed to handle more than ever, taking out the human employee involvement. 

It's f**king sad that the majority of store checkouts are now "self-checkouts", as an example.  Another is with calling almost any company or store and being straight victimized by automated receptionists (some are brutally inefficient).

My Mom complains constantly about her experiences and I remind her that it's a different generation these days, businesses are simply not run like the were in the "good ol' days" where every business wasn't exhaustively competitive and actually cared about customer relations.

I would encourage everyone to severely lower their expectations with customer support these days.

Just my 2 cents on the matter.

[RH | 4,900]

59 minutes ago, Boosted52405 said:

I've found the older I get the realization that a massive percentage (90%+) of the workforce out there, care very very little about their performance on the job, or providing patience/care/comfort to customers.  It seems to be rare to connect with a worker or representative that actually will take the time to take care of you.

I think this is a generational thing sadly, with every business and practice out there being so cut throat just to survive.  Customers are just beans being counted sort of thing.  Workers tend to be more checklist and task driven with the relentless pursuit of pushing volume and meeting quotas.  Automations and software are pushed to handle more than ever, taking out the human employee involvement. 

It's f**king sad that the majority of store checkouts are now "self-checkouts", as an example.  Another is with calling almost any company or store and being straight victimized by automated receptionists (some are brutally inefficient).

My Mom complains constantly about her experiences and I remind her that it's a different generation these days, businesses are simply not run like the were in the "good ol' days" where every business wasn't exhaustively competitive and actually cared about customer relations.

I would encourage everyone to severely lower their expectations with customer support these days.

Just my 2 cents on the matter.

I agree but I think the large lack of people willing to work partially compounds the problem.  Customer service is a tough job to be in.  Most people who come to customer service have a complaint and many of them come with anger.  Come on, people, the person on the other side of the phone or maybe even at the store is just another Average Joe.  They didn't cause your problem, so being nice to them might get them to be nice to you.

However, the flip side in the current market dynamic is that every company needs more workers but people aren't coming to work.  I work in manufacturing for cloths and we have a large warehouse.  About a month ago, we implemented a large robotics project that I was a part of, which seems to have reduced our need for on-hand employees on the floor by about 40-50%.

It's easy to think these bots were eliminating jobs, but the truth is those were jobs that even when offering very competitive pay, people wouldn't fill.  We had to innovate to meet demand.  Apply this to something like customer service and even "good" companies are probably having a very tough time hiring customer support/service techs because who wants to make $10-12/hr, being berated all day by anger customers when you can just quit and get a different job paying equal or more and not have to deal with angry people?  Those companies that can afford it fill in the gap by further automation.

I'm not saying this is the sole cause of these problems, but as of the last couple of years, I'm positive it's been a huge contributing factor.  People don't want to work.  These aren't new jobs.  I just see the problem again and again and again, from McDonalds, to Wal-Mart to factory/warehouse work.  The caliber of employee that would fill such a role doesn't want to work, even though I've seen wages literally double in many cases.

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

Nobody wants to work = nobody wants to work for un-competitive wages, while business owners get rich. Keep raising wages, and workers will show up.

 

Thank God for unions, we have 3000 people on the wait list for our apprenticeship. Lots of guys with worthless degrees and 100s of thousands of dollars in debt, fighting to come dig ditches in the sun

[ICrappedMyPants | 302]

1 hour ago, MrWunderful said:

Nobody wants to work = nobody wants to work for un-competitive wages, while business owners get rich. Keep raising wages, and workers will show up.

 

Thank God for unions, we have 3000 people on the wait list for our apprenticeship. Lots of guys with worthless degrees and 100s of thousands of dollars in debt, fighting to come dig ditches in the sun

I work for a Fortune 500 company and there are plenty of people I would fire on the spot if I was in control and there were no unemployment consequences. Outside of people that don’t want to work for low wages, there are so many people that are basically stealing from their employers because they either aren’t doing their jobs or they do such a terrible job at them. I’ve seen this from upper management level to staff level. I’d argue that the biggest problem isn’t just employers or employees, there are plenty that suck on both sides. I’d argue it’s sacrificing economic competition and opportunities by allowing big business to leverage economies of scale and causing the demise of smaller businesses while bloating head counts due to inefficiencies and keeping salaries and wages low.  Small businesses’ share of GDP has been on the decline for decades and it’s no surprise to me that we see worse customer service now than before too. 

Edited June 2, 2022 by ICrappedMyPants

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

33 minutes ago, ICrappedMyPants said:

I work for a Fortune 500 company and there are plenty of people I would fire on the spot if I was in control and there were no unemployment consequences. Outside of people that don’t want to work for low wages, there are so many people that are basically stealing from their employers because they either aren’t doing their jobs or they do such a terrible job at them. I’ve seen this from upper management level to staff level. I’d argue that the biggest problem isn’t just employers or employees, there are plenty that suck on both sides. I’d argue it’s sacrificing economic competition and opportunities by allowing big business to leverage economies of scale and causing the demise of smaller businesses while bloating head counts due to inefficiencies and keeping salaries and wages low.  Small businesses’ share of GDP has been on the decline for decades and it’s no surprise to me that we see worse customer service now than before too. 

I agree, I should’ve clarified that my statement was related more to lower wage paying jobs. Especially in the service industry.I agree, I should’ve clarified that my statement was related more to lower wage paying jobs. Especially in the service industry.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

On 6/2/2022 at 11:02 AM, Boosted52405 said:

I've found the older I get the realization that a massive percentage (90%+) of the workforce out there, care very very little about their performance on the job, or providing patience/care/comfort to customers.  It seems to be rare to connect with a worker or representative that actually will take the time to take care of you.

I think this is a generational thing sadly, with every business and practice out there being so cut throat just to survive.

I think you're mixing two slightly different concepts there.  I disagree that the lack of motivation in actually, truly helping a customer has anything at all to do with what generation someone was born into.  I do agree that it has a lot to do with how shitty and cut throat businesses are these days.  I disagree that many of them actually have to create and enforce the practices they do in order to survive--I believe that the overwhelming majority of that nonsense has to do with creating artificial value within the organization simply so that he stock numbers tick upward and appease all of the stockholders (many of whom sit in high positions within said organization and are more than willing to dump their investment and jump ship to help ruin another company the moment their nonsense makes things go completely south).

On 6/2/2022 at 11:02 AM, Boosted52405 said:

It's f**king sad that the majority of store checkouts are now "self-checkouts", as an example.  Another is with calling almost any company or store and being straight victimized by automated receptionists (some are brutally inefficient).

I think it depends on where you live and what stores are in that area so as to be able to say that a majority of checkouts are self-checkouts.  For example, of all the stores in my area, only Walmart has a true majority of them, and only Walmart, Sam's Club (basically Walmart) and two grocery chains (one local, one national) actually have them at all.  For those places that do have a majority of them, that's just a sign of the corporation wanting to squeeze as much profit as possible out of their operations, and damn their employees.  My brother and I have both noticed, independently of one another, that such places started moving their slowest, most incompetent workers to the manned checkout posts after a while in order to try to force people to get used to the mass-self-checkout model they were trying to move to.  Several times, I've witnessed customers all lining up together behind the one or two pitifully slow regular checkouts at late hours just to either force Walmart to open more lanes or document exactly how their customers feel about the attempt to force them into the self-checkout model; this has been emphasized a bit once our local Walmarts stopped being open 24/7 and they had to close late due to customers being lined up throughout the store.

I don't mind the ones in the local grocery stores, as there's only four per store versus 8-12 regular checkout lanes, with most regular checkout lanes either being fully manned during peak times, or additional lanes opened up by other staff as soon as any sort of line begins to form there.  And, at those places, after certain hours (usually 9 or 10 in the evening), they shut down all the self-checkout lanes and require you to go through the normal lanes.  In those cases, I believe the self-checkout system works, as it's actually about personal convenience (going through quickly if you've just a couple of items, etc.).

On 6/2/2022 at 12:09 PM, RH said:

I work in manufacturing for cloths and we have a large warehouse.  About a month ago, we implemented a large robotics project that I was a part of, which seems to have reduced our need for on-hand employees on the floor by about 40-50%.

It's easy to think these bots were eliminating jobs, but the truth is those were jobs that even when offering very competitive pay, people wouldn't fill.  We had to innovate to meet demand.  Apply this to something like customer service and even "good" companies are probably having a very tough time hiring customer support/service techs because who wants to make $10-12/hr, being berated all day by anger customers when you can just quit and get a different job paying equal or more and not have to deal with angry people?  Those companies that can afford it fill in the gap by further automation.

Do you work in the hiring/firing portion of your company?  If not, you might be surprised by what might be going on there (and absolutely does happen, more and more frequently, in other companies).  Many of the companies complaining the loudest about how they have all these open jobs but nobody is willing to do them, even for competitive wages are actually ignoring/dismissing interviews and actively not hiring people, normally in the name of moving to automation.  If they make a big enough stink about how "lazy" the average worker is, both society as well as those that work at the company are much less likely to get pissed off when they replace a bunch or even whole category of workers with automation.  This may or may not have happened in your specific warehouse, but I've heard enough stories of such shenanigans that have been substantiated by internal whistleblowers that I'm not willing to just accept that there weren't actually people willing to do the work out of hand.

As for customer service, have you ever done it before?  And if so, when was the last time?  Most companies make the lives of their front line customer service representatives, the people who are basically "the face of the company" for most consumers, a living nightmare.  Yes, there are bad employees at every workplace, but the incredible glut of companies who require rigid, stilted scripting, unforgiving QC processes designed to basically fuel turnover, and who then add sales expectations and quotas to jobs where folks are just supposed to be answering a phone and assisting with questions that it's truly difficult to feel anything but sympathy for the people who work such jobs and generally some level of contempt toward the companies that put them through the wringer.  Corporations don't actually understand or care about what their consumers need, but instead care about how quickly, and most importantly inexpensively, they can get said consumers to buy whatever line the company is selling on a given day, get off the phone/chat/email, and leave them alone.

On 6/2/2022 at 12:21 PM, MrWunderful said:

Nobody wants to work = nobody wants to work for un-competitive wages, while business owners get rich. Keep raising wages, and workers will show up.

Bingo.  If you pay your workers well, train them well and for the job(s) that they're actually supposed to be doing, and don't treat them like shit (or automatons), you generally won't have any issues with applicants or turnover.

 

[Boosted52405 | 178]

On 6/5/2022 at 2:17 PM, darkchylde28 said:

I think you're mixing two slightly different concepts there.  I disagree that the lack of motivation in actually, truly helping a customer has anything at all to do with what generation someone was born into.  I do agree that it has a lot to do with how shitty and cut throat businesses are these days. 

Yep my point generation-wise was that businesses are run quite a bit different than they were in prior generations.  Technology has a huge part to do with it, along with the exhaustive competition.  There definitely is more of a quantity versus quality trend that de-prioritizes customer experience.

But...regarding younger generations, I do truly feel that technology has burdened them from a social and personal development perspective.  I've seen kids that are so addicted to technology that they struggle incredibly in speaking to people face-to-face (and have severe focus issues).

Here is an article from several years ago suggesting the same...

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/15/social-media-making-millennials-less-social-study.html

This article also touches on a trend of isolation and loneliness with younger generations compared to prior, essentially due to technology (but notes other factors too):

https://www.addictioncenter.com/news/2019/08/gen-z-loneliest-generation/

If we consider things of this nature generationally, and the resulting impact to personal development and areas such as mental health, I feel it notably carries over to the workforce.  Combine this with cut throat business practices and the customer experience is definitely impacted.

More importantly, I worry about the impacts of technology on younger generations long-term...