While I’m complaining about the “experts” on television, I’d like to complain about mandatory scheduled vacation, the practice of everybody in a company taking at least part of their vacation time at the same time generally leaving just a skeleton crew around. While I’m sure this is wonderful for the bureaucrats in human resources, it creates all sorts of realworld problems. Consider this example. Company A has a customer with a problem that can only be solved with the assistance of people from Company B. Company B is on mandatory scheduled vacation; next week Company A will be on mandatory scheduled vacation. That leaves the customer stewing in his own juices for a week.
This practice is particularly infuriating when it’s combined with voice response systems. Without some living person available to track down the single guy who’s not on vacation, getting action can be practically impossible.
Not too many everyday practices infuriate me more than automated response systems. I’m usually irate by the time I get through to an actual person. Who, invariably, asks me the information I’ve already typed into the phone pad.
I agree James. I can’t figure out why you have to input all that crap and then repeat it when you actually get to talk to an actual person that actually speaks english. Well, sometimes they speak english.
The only thing that annoys me more is not being able to figure out the number sequence to get you to a human being. there are plenty of automated voice systems out there that don’t have any option to get to a real person. You used to be able to hit 0 and it would work, but a lot of companies now have obscure number combinations (that they don’t tell you) to be able to do it.