Nov. Tech month from hell

 

Compared to people being sick and dying, technology problems should be minor. 

Should be. And I won't deny gratitude for being alive and healthy.

However, we must have spent half of our waking time in November trying to solve technology glitches. Not a day went by that something major didn't go wrong where hours of our lives were lost trying to work through the problem.

Things like standing orders in two banks that stopped for no reason, causing hours of trying to catch up on payments. The money wasn't the problem. Getting the money to the people that weren't paid was. Even using recommended solutions, didn't work.

Over and under payment of taxes because of bad information.

Trying to get a boarding pass on airline. We won't discuss the fact that the amount of information required should be mentioned before starting the procedure, the screens that went blank, etc.

Trying to get medical appointments on line with their systems not working.

Time outs on anything on line we tried to fill out.

Codes required and not sent until after the time outs.

Leaving messages via email to get a reply that the answer would be forth coming in 10 days. We needed the information then.

Forms that disappeared.

 

I never thought I'd become a Luddite. I fell in love with things like e-mail, word processing, Excel, Power Point, FB, Skype, YouTube, graphics programs, games, etc. However, there are time you need humans not software. In one of our bank problems where we couldn't get the form to work after a morning trying, we went to the bank. The teller solved the problem in ten minutes. Amazing what humans can do.

However, the lack of any help from the airline may mean my husband can't take his needed flight because he can't deal with a human. He's technically competent or he was until the last few layers of complications have been added by those who develop the software.

Even something similar like a charity I give to regularly instead of one click now involved multiple screens and directions. My solution? Give to another charity.

As a child, I watched my mother would pickup the telephone and the operator would put through the call. Sometimes they would chat. I don't want to go back that far, but I would like to reach a human, like our friendly bank teller, when things go wrong they get fixed fast. I wish the software developers would make things user friendly, instead of user hostile. 

It is not possible to withdraw from technology but I do wish for a time when things were simple or simpler. When I think of looking for a cave with heat and hot and cold running water to avoid the complications, I realize I would miss the internet. 

I shudder to think that these may the good old days as life gets more and more complicated to do what should be simple.