When Technology Sucks
What is the purpose of technology?
Quite simply, it should make our lives easier and allow us more leisure time to pursue our passions and spend more time doing healthful activities.
So, then, why are we so busy — never catching up on our to-do lists — and so burdened with health and obesity problems? Clearly, technology isn’t helping.
Sure, we can point to some obvious successes over the last century. Let’s take the washing machine. I once watched a great PBS series called 1900 House, a reality show in which a family had to live in a Victorian house for a couple of months and use the same amenities that a family would have used back then.
What immediately struck me was how difficult life was just a little over a century ago. The shocking thing I recall is how arduous a task it was for the wife to do the laundry by hand, especially given the long, woolen gowns the women had to wear — both while doing the laundry and actually washing the gowns also.
Thus, I soon realized how valuable the washing machine was in freeing up women to do other tasks, including finding work outside the home.
The refrigerator was also a great invention for its ability to save food for longer periods of time.
Most household appliances could be considered welcome improvements in technology. Others — the microwave oven, the dishwasher (I mean, you spend almost as much time filling and emptying the thing as you would hand-washing the dishes), and even the television — have more of a mixed bag of pros and cons.
Even upgrades in modes of transportation have allowed so many of us to travel all over the world as well as a half-mile down the road to pick up milk. Planes, trains, and automobiles get us where we want to go, and fast. The cost is years of air pollution (well, not so much the trains) and potential climate disaster on the horizon.
Moving forward a few decades, we can see the evolution of the computer and the cell phone. These are also seen as good and necessary things . . . until they are not.
For example, I recently re-entered the job market after seventeen years. Those seventeen years may as well have been a hundred in terms of job-hunting. And I know because seventeen years ago I worked as a recruiter at an agency that specialized in hiring for temp and perm positions. Back then, if we posted a job opening, we’d get a few hundred responses (it was in New York City). We’d take a couple of hours to sort through the resumes that were sent and then put about 90% of them in the NO pile. Then we’d call those in the YES pile and invite them in for their first interview. If we liked them, we’d work to find a placement for them. If we didn’t, it was bye-bye, no hard feelings.
But when I had to look for a job recently, I heard everyone was hiring. Maybe so, but I determined that many companies couldn’t fill the jobs because the prospective employees gave up on the application process!
One place I decided to apply was the post office. Signs everywhere said “We’re hiring!” I realize it’s a federal agency, but the application itself took me two hours to complete — and I have a Master’s degree. I’ve heard nothing back, not even a computer-generated note saying, “Thank you for applying with the U.S. postal service. We will be in touch.” Nothing, nada. Two hours I will never get back.
A similar thing happened when I applied for a teaching job at the local community college. Now, I’ve had seventeen years of experience teaching college students, with excellent recommendations. Still, I had to slog through the application process. At the end of the process, the online application invited me to attach a resume.
Now you want a resume? How about if I send the resume first and then you decide if I’m worth a follow-up? That will take just five minutes of your time and mine.
This is an example of when technology sucks. These useless online applications (and how many fucking user names and passwords do I need to keep track of, even just to buy a simple item online?) are a time-suck for all involved, but the corporations like them because having someone come in and set up a system once means they don’t have to hire a human being to sort through things.
And this brings me to my best frenemy, the phone. For the kids (and most adults) these days, taking the phone out of their hand is akin to chopping their arm off with an ax.
Again, the companies don’t want to hire a receptionist anymore. God forbid we should hear a human voice, with all its nuances, direct us to the right person or to calm us with a kind tone or answer a simple question. Instead, we get: “If you’d like to contact the finance department, please press 1. If you’d like to take a shit, please press 2.” And so on. Most of the time, now, you can go through the full range of numbers on these phone banks and NEVER get the option to speak to a representative. They direct you to the website to solve your problem. If I could solve it with the website, I would. I already tried that.
Sadly, the pandemic made things worse. When the students returned to the classroom, all excited, last spring, their enthusiasm didn’t last long. They had realized it was easier to roll over on the couch and turn on their laptop, as they had done the previous two years. Absenteeism and missed assignments were the new epidemic. Being so young, they probably didn’t realize that “easier” doesn’t always mean better.
I’m not here to promote any one company, but one reason many of us like Apple is because when you call Apple Cares for help with a problem (last time I checked), an actual human being answers the call and then helps you work through the problem. Also, if you visit an Apple store, you are greeted warmly by a worker, who then points you in the direction of another human who will help you with your computer problem. This has become so rare, it feels like visiting a spa!
Eventually, I found an editing job at a place where I had been freelancing off and on for years. They wanted me. But I still had to go through the application and background check process, which took an astonishing eight weeks — for someone who had been on their books for seven years!
A lawyer friend told me that the companies need to do this — and hire an outside agency to do the recruiting and background checks — for their own legal liability. What a bullshit world we’re living in. The companies use technology for their profit margins; they couldn’t care less about the inconvenience of the human beings on the other side.
I may look like a fossil to some, but I don’t consider myself a Luddite. I have to learn a fair amount of technology to do my job, whether it’s teaching or editing, or something else. And simply to navigate various social media.
Now I work at home, online. I meet and greet my co-workers from all over the country. I mark up my documents and route them to the next in line. I never have to leave my house. And for this reason, I occasionally say, “Yay, technology!”
