You're Doing It Wrong
Sunday, October 9, 2011 at 11:34AM Everywhere you turn, indicators of societal and economic decline confront you with grim sadness. The streets and subways are no longer as clean as they once were. Protests and discord block our streets, the masses clamoring for reforms and dreams that occupy a tense middle ground between wishful thinking and woefully misinformed.
Yet, my friends, it did not have to all turn out this way. In fact, much of the malaise that permeates our soulless corporate infrastructure these days is the direct fault of the ignoramuses in charge of these entities. Allow me a moment to highlight two recent examples of utter business stupidity.
Back in the day, I used to subscribe to a number of magazines, including masculine staples GQ and Esquire. The content of these periodicals often proved thought-provoking, and in a worst-case scenario each month at least the "Answer Fella" would trot out a pithy and informative response to a ridiculous inquiry I had never previously considered. Sadly, though, as my bills mounted and my finances dwindled, I was forced to end my years-long relationship with both publications, and discarded the annual renewal cars that usually began appearing two months into a 12-month subscription.
This doesn't mean that the fine folks at Conde Nast and Hearst Magazines accepted my termination of our affiliation, of course. It began with the hard sell, the warning letters, the grave admonitions that my connection to their rich content was in danger of going by the wayside. Then came the (unsolicited) attempts at forcing an automatic renewal, through attempts to debit my various checking and credit accounts; unfortunately for them, money is usually not to be found in those areas, so each request was rebuffed by my financial institutions. Finally, what did they do? Someone of rich genius and rare psychological instinct at each company determined that I really meant to keep my subscriptions going, and that I wanted merely to be billed later. So, both magazines continue to arrive in my mailbox each and every month, without my consent or desire. Considering that I have never once sent them any indication that I wanted to renew -- including never even checking some small box for automatic billing or renewal anywhere -- do they honestly now expect me to pay for all of these issues? I'm not even interested in the content any longer; each new issue winds up immediately in my recycle pile. Good luck cashing in on what you "think" I owe you, gentlemen. I will die before I ever hand you another red cent.
Speaking of collections, I will admit to an occasional call from a bank or other credit institution regarding the delinquency of certain accounts. Here is the thing, though: the banks and collections teams all must employ the same robo-caller mechanism. You know the type: it pre-calls a number on its list of so-called deadbeats, and then once the line is picked up on the other end, transfers you to a human who can then proceed to berate and threaten you in a polite sing-songy manner. Unfortunately, what these systems have not yet figured out is that the transfer process upon answering the phone takes perhaps 15 seconds or more before you wind up connected to a live operator. If I hear that indicative silence on the other end, why in the world do you expect me to stick around and wait for your representative? I say hello, I hear nothing in return, I hang up. The process repeats itself each and every day. Your inefficient system will never reach me, folks. Maybe it's time you ditched that vaunted robo-caller and allowed your staff to dial digits. At least then you would force me to be rude and hang up on an honest-to-goodness person.
So yeah, to reiterate, I have no great love for the huddled, dirty masses occupying a park nobody had ever even heard of in Lower Manhattan beforehand. But those corporations? Man, they are dumb and deserve some mockery for their stupidity as well.
