It’s been a while since I’ve revisited my pet peeves but don’t for a second think that I’ve forgotten to be annoyed at stuff. As I reminder, I’ve addressed this topic in the past: Do Pet Peeves Ever Go Away? and I’m Down With OPPP.
The first one is minor. People who back into their parking spots annoy me. It’s harder to back into a spot that it is to back out of one, and there’s no reason their cars need to be facing into the (aisle? lane?) in the parking lot. They are not going to need to make a quick getaway or anything like that. This behavior is even more galling when they believe they’ve beaten you to a good spot. They position their car to “protect” the spot, and then execute a nine-point turn to be back that ass up. Don’t do this, people.
The other thing that bothers me is tasks that are needlessly complicated online. This has started to make me more angry than annoyed and yesterday I realized why. Let me offer the following situations to illustrate this problem.
When I was admitted to college, I got a packet of papers to fill out to indicate my housing preferences and roommate qualities. It was two pages tops. I completed it in about five minutes and mailed it back. A few weeks later, I got a letter with my dorm assignment and contact information for my roommate.
Contrast this to my older son’s experience. In order to apply to college, he had to create an online profile with two-factor authentication just to upload multiple documents and complete many pages of questionnaires. Once admitted, he had to apply for a new identification number in a different system, whereupon he had to create another profile (again with TFA) and then complete (and I’m not kidding here) a sixteen page questionnaire about his housing and roommate preferences. He then had to repeatedly check the “Housing Portal” until he got his assignment. There were lots of other steps and while there was a central portal, it wasn’t always clear what was completed and what wasn’t until it was late, and then the text would turn red.
For the last few weeks, Quinn has been trying to enroll in the Laney College electrician certification program. In order to do so, he needed to get an enrollment ID number (one webpage) and then do Verify Me, which is a separate system with other hoops, including uploading a government document. The problem was that when Quinn got to the page where he was supposed to hit the VERIFY button, there was no button. He tried at least six times on four occasions to complete this step and it was just impossible. So he called someone in the admissions office who said you need to submit a work ticket to the IT desk. The IT desk responded to the work ticket with a message that just said “ticket completed,” but that did not make the VERIFY button show up. After more than two weeks of this, he went to the admissions office and after a two minute conversation with the clerk, had his enrollment ID, his student ID, and his student email address. And yes, that included the time it took for him to take his driver’s license out of his wallet to show her.
(I apologize that the last two paragraphs were so tiresome. I did that intentionally so that you could share the experience with me.)
The clerk was the only one working in the admissions office, as far as I could tell. The room had seven teller-style windows; she stood at the first one and helped students as they came in. It occurred to me that before the online system, there were probably seven clerks in that office, each with their own window. The migration of bureaucracy from human systems to online systems is not intended to be more convenient for the consumer. It’s intended to be more cost-effective for the institution. It really doesn’t matter to schools, tech companies, health insurance providers, etc, that they’ve created systems don’t work for people, because they have created the systems to actively avoid their consumers.
It’s not an accident that the only helpful Apple employees are the ones in the store. It is almost impossible to get help from them on the phone, and the online systems are just as obtuse and irritating as the ones I’ve described above. In person, you cannot pull that shit. I mean, you can try, which is how we get the myth of the slothful DMV employee. Companies would rather spend money on shitty customer service software that need constant security reinforcement to avoid identity theft than invest in people who could actually help their customers.
Okay, rant over.
What to Watch
This week I didn’t read much but I did watch Season 3 of Bridgerton and Brats, the documentary about the Brat Pack. Of Bridgerton, the less said the better, because if you spend even one minute thinking critically about the show, the entire premise falls apart and you can’t enjoy it. If you are bored and need something to watch, go for it.
Brats, though, I recommend. Andrew McCarthy leads his camera crew on a tour of the homes inhabited by our favorite 80s actors, deliberating on the conflict and anger he feels about the designation they received as Brat Pack members. He talks to Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Timothy Hutton, Jon Cryer (who vehemently objects to be called a brat packer), and Demi Moore. The movie reminded me a little of the Up series, which interviews the same group of ten Brits every seven years. They are both groups created by the presence of cameras whose lives are now defined in relation to one another as a result.
The actors who were deemed members of the Brat Pack (a group that has no defined membership) all resent the categorization, and consider being labeled this way to have been detrimental to their career. Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald both declined to participate, and the other actors have made varying levels of peace with the term. Ultimately, it’s a story about the power of words to shape public and personal perception. In the 80s, they were the symbol of generational change in culture. Labeling them “brats” was a way of diminishing their talent and success.
I’m about ten years younger than those actors but when I was eleven, I made a scrapbook of celebrities that was titled People I Like and Want to Be Friends With. It was filled with pictures of all these actors (and Ricky Schroder, of course). We had recently moved from Indiana to New Jersey and I didn’t have friends of my own. My scrapbook was like a yearbook filled with older, cooler friends. Their movies were ensemble casts of people trying to be friends, or enemies, or to fall in love or just have sex. I wanted those things too. I didn’t get to see a lot of those movies at age 11, but I did in the following years, and they presented to me the world I thought I would be navigating. They were showing the way.
Thirty-five years later, they are themselves looking for a path to understanding their own youth and the careers they had (or didn’t have). They had varying degrees of interest in resuming friendships, and I thought of my own high school friends that I moved away from. Like the Brat Pack, we splintered rather than drifted apart.
One Last Thing
I just started a six-month semi-sabbatical (I have a little work) to concentrate on writing. I am not sure what role this newsletter will play in that, but in anticipation of maybe getting more people to read it, I’ve updated my About page. Please check it out and let me know what you think. It has a very moody picture! And if you like it, please share O&A with your friends.
Hi. I am glad you included your photo on this post because it is nice to see your beautiful face! I share your aggravation….my recent frustrating online experiences involve receiving links to “check-in” prior to arriving at a doctor appointment (which I dutifully complete), only to be asked the same questions upon arrival at the appointment. Ugh!
Good luck to Q 😃