Rigmarolling Rant

Technology makes people unable to think and everything less efficient

Sometimes you need to give yourself permission to rant, to get something off your chest, to lighten the load…so you can let it go, not dwell on it. Doing so can help another who has had a similar experience. So today’s rant is a feel-good-get-it-out and move on because these things are akin to the Agent Smith’s trying to snare you in a downard spiral and you are not going to let them! ;-)

Rigmarole: something (such as a procedure or an explanation) that is long, complicated, and tedious

Nothing triggers me more than dealing with rigmarole of trying to take care of a quick task and being met with paper shufflers, script reading robots, time wasting re-routing phone prompts that run in circles then often disconnect, endless procedures and protocols where no one seems to know what to do or how to resolve even the most basic request.

I’ve been in my house for 2 years. I still get an enormous amount of mail for the previous owners from United Health Care.  Probably over 100 times I’ve written on the envelopes “return to sender, no one by this name at this address” and dropped it back in the USPS.

Just like I clean out my inbox with unsubscribes, usually for things I didn’t subscribe to, which is also time consuming and annoying, so do I, also, try to limit the mail when I can.

I am sick of the spam.

So much spam everywhere.

Advertisements popping up on “almost” every technological tool you use, many can’t be stopped and the ones that have a setting that can be changed require you to stop and waste more time to change the setting…until an update, to which you’ll need to change it again.

Not to mention the influencers influencing with their over zealous perfectly crafted bits, because you too can have it all…if you just follow them and give them your money…

Ok back to the mail situation.

I decide to call United Health Care. First, I had to look up their number only to find their blatant diversity bullshit advertising staring at me in the face, if you know you know…. agenda much?

Then after finally reaching a human, it was like I was asking someone to hang the moon. I had to get re-routed, then they wanted photos front and back of the envelope, then they put me on hold for 10 minutes to talk to “someone” and a week later the “privacy team” (whatever the hell that means) is still reviewing the “situation,” ensuring me they will keep me posted on the case.

WHAT THE FUCK!!!! There is no “case.” I don’t want them to keep me “posted” digitally, after all, the whole point is to stop the “POST.”

What should have taken, at most, 2 minutes of my time, is now over a week later and not one human at this corporation knows how to simply remove someone from a mailing list?

This is the world we live in, it’s retarded, and I don’t mean retarded in a derogatory way, but by its slang definition: “stupid or foolish.” And you know it’s true, you think it even if you don’t say it out loud!

Why is no one able to just take care of something so incredibly simple anymore? This is SIMPLE! Knock-knock, is anyone home inside that noggin or has an AI demon completely taken over? People with place holder titles passing responsibility around like the child’s game of Telephone Whispers where the message changes with each person and the customer as to repeat themselves over and over.

A similar situation happened with AMEX.

I feared my card was compromised so I ordered a new card. Two weeks later, no card arrived, so I started inquiring. I couldn’t reach anyone with any ability to process basic information. I told them, the card is lost, you need to get me another one, to which every single person over a month replied with the same blanket statement, “I see your card has been ordered and is in route with FedEx, it should arrive soon.” I had to contact them 10 times, each time, the same answer, a month later, I had to get ugly with them before they finally routed me 6 times to a manger and then that person got me a new card 3 days later.  It took a month (actually I think it was longer than that) to get the card and no one at AMEX cared that this was a security issue, that I didn’t have a card I could use, nor that I wasted a massive amount of time speaking to customer service who just read a script and lacked any cognitive ability to understand that FedEX had lost the card. I said to the people, I mail things a lot, I can assure you it doesn’t take this long for something to ship, it is lost and…. crickets, they’d just disconnect the chat, send a new person and I’d have to start all over AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN with the same results…no results.

These corporations and their tech mogul mindsets claim to be making life easier but the customer service people, if you can get to an actual human, are trained to be like robots. No one can solve any issue, has any authority to make anything right, nor seem to be able to connect in a human-to-human way.

Everything has prompts and pop ups into a black abyss of technological goo.

The new cars are no better. I bought a Nissan Pathfinder, less thhan a year old the “technology” spazzed out on me on a busy interstate and the car just stopped. Thankfully I was able to get it just enough off the side of the road to not get pummeled by a semi-truck, but WTF.  The GPS can’t find my house either, despite me actually driving to it while having the GPS on many times….one mile from my house and the GPS yells Re-Route, Re-Route…. Re-Route yourself Siri because I KNOW WHERE I’m GOING!

As I was stuck on the interstate, I called my insurance which includes a tow if needed, guess what… 1.5 hours later they text me that they can’t find a tow-truck and wish me good luck. Wow, so helpful…so glad I pay for this incredibly useful service. Ten minutes later, I had a truck on the way - - - and this is why time and time again I come back to the belief, if you want something done, you’re going to have to do it yourself. It took me a fraction of the time to find a tow, sure I had to pay for it myself, but relying on these systems is more often thatn not useless…a rigmarole to no-where-ville.

The story doesn’t end there…the tow driver almost wouldn’t tow me because my car couldn’t use its emergency brakes, because unlike the old brakes that were set with a manual handle, the new ones…technology…and guess what, when the technology goes out…no emergency brake!  He decided to risk it anyway and help me out, tells me that they won’t even tow those ridiculous “electric vehicles” because they are too great of a fire hazard and they have to make an entirely separate lot for them, which the cost to do would put them out of business…. why am I not surprised?

I’m ready to sell this car and get an older model without GPS, without technology that breaks down and tracks data, it’s insane…when I watched Back to the Future in my youth, this is not what I envisioned. Anyone else want to go back to 1985?

Things that used to take a few minutes via a quick phone call now have turned into a bunch re-route, robotic, rigmarole.

Just like the “subscriptions” that get ya, so too, do the these “technological advances.” They suck your patience, time, money and energy.

I know technology has some advantages and we’re heading full speed ahead into its lair, but when things don’t work, they really don’t work.

We can blame mercury retrograde all day long, but as a collective, we did this to ourselves. I do not consent, yet here I am typing on this computer because to live and connect with others, and not completely turn into a recluse, it is a necessary undertaking……….and an under-taking it is some days…a funeral of genuine connection that existed before the world-wide-web.

I have many more stories, I’m certain you do too…. I mean, don’t even get me started about the bank hack that happened through PayPal just like in the Beekeeper Movie (don’t use PayPal) ….so how about let’s get it off our chest in the comments, let’s use this rant as alchemy for the ever-frustrating-tik-tok-technation-damnation of the human spirit! It may suck the souls of many into its black mirror, but for me, I will survive its hive-mind-time-sucking-drives…and get out alive!😊

Maybe the Memes can save us from the madness? Maybe we should forget and leave our phones at home sometimes? Maybe save up all the spam snail-mail for kindling when SHTF? Maybe a return to rotary, where there are no buttons to push (literally or figuratively) is the wave that will rescue the future? Maybe the EMFs will fizzle out with a little help from the birds? I don’t know anymore…. Either way, deep breathing will see us through all this unecessary rigmarole!

It doesn’t matter how spiritual you are, life brings frustrations and is a bit of a cosmic joke, thus, laughter really is the best medicine to the absurdity of it all! Don’t let the Agent Smith’s and technology gremlins get to you…let the rigmarole roll of your shoulders because it’s going to get weirder out there.

With love and technology that works properly and humans that human…get outside today,
~ Angela

Here’s some other related posts you may like:
SubSCRIPTion Snare
Digital Gluttony
Ghost of Censorship Present
Is the Algorithm your Drug Dealer?
Tell-A-Vision
Sage inside the machine
Spirit of the Akashic Tech
Write it Yourself
Hacking up the Natural
The Internet is a Parrot’s Paradise