Modern life (viewed from the sidelines)

My offering today is relatively simple and straightforward.

It concerns what I believe to be two of the many conundra of 21st Century modern living, despite the ever-more amazing scientific and technological developments that the human race continually invents and takes advantage of.

I refer, firstly, to what (to me) appears to be a terminally-steep decline in the general standard of customer service across the board over the past forty years; and secondly, to the apparent (similarly depressing and debilitating) tendency of officialdom in all its forms to become increasingly complicated, illogical, inefficient and lacking in common sense.

The combination – it seems to me – calls into question whether the fashionable theory that the present is by definition always “the best time to be alive” for a member of the human race is actually true/correct.

Who is to say – for example – that the first humans and Neanderthals, eking out their survival by living in caves, wearing animal skins to keep themselves warm and either simply hunter-gathering and/or experimenting with rudimentary systematic crop-growing, didn’t have a good time of it … or indeed a better (more relaxed and enjoyable) time of it … than we do today, wandering around as we are in our over-crowded city streets, weighed down with our laptops, smartphones, social media, motor vehicles, aeroplanes and public utilities who couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery?

It’s a question worth considering at least.

Coming to my subjects for today, I shall begin with the declining quality of customer service.

Over the past three months – having moved to a new, more rural, part of the United Kingdom than where I lived for the bulk of my working career – I have necessarily been engaged in ongoing dealings with every utility supplier you might care to list.

I have had contacts with such organisations over the electronic automatic gate entrance to my property; the attendant intercom system whereby visitors announce their arrival and then wait to be let in (or not); and also my suppliers of liquid petroleum gas, oil, electricity, “water in” and “water out”.

To one extent or another they all operate their customer phone contacts via “automatic systems” involving the caller listening to – and then tapping in – their choice from a numbered list detailing the department and/or subjects that they might wish to talk to or about.

[For present purposes I leave aside the inevitability that – as often as not – none of the options provided cover the issue or matter that the caller wishes to discuss!].

Invariably, the customer then hears a message stating that their custom is very important to the organisation. Next, however, it continues by disclosing that at the moment they are fielding a very high volume of calls and the caller might either prefer to contact them via their website [details of which are then provided]; or perhaps instead leave a message containing their name and number and “be rung back”; or finally – if they really want to – they can, of course, stay on the line in the hope or expectation that a real human being might eventually speak to them.

This last message is sometimes followed by the news that the caller is currently (e.g.) “Number 14 in the queue …”

So the customer waits … and waits … and maybe (after e.g. twenty minutes of hanging on) they might get a message “You are now Number 11 in the queue …”

And so it goes on.

On three occasions in the past fortnight I have been holding on for over 75 minutes in order to speak to someone about a relatively simple matter that would (in my estimation) take less than five minutes to “sort”.

Here, dear Rusters, I kid you not.

On two of those occasions – without any warning – the phone line suddenly went “dead”.

Furthermore, on the single occasion that I actually got to speak to someone, after then making significant progress towards resolving my problem, inexplicably (in the middle of my conversation) I was “cut off”, again without warning.

I was too fed up and frustrated to ring again that day – and have still not yet made my next attempt to resolve the issue concerned.

When it comes to my second subject de jour – which I’d bluntly describe here as coming under the headings either The Stupidity And Lack Of Common Sense Of UK Organisations and/or You Just Couldn’t Make It Up! – and with no particular relish, I will go straight to my recent experience of getting my eyes tested by an optician for the first time in eight years.

Said test happened to uncover the possibility that I may have an issue with the peripheral vision in my right eye and it was decided that I needed to have a further test at a local hospital.

For this to happen, first I had to provide details of my GP surgery because “the system” required that a GP needed to refer me for a hospital appointment before one can be booked (fair enough).

This was accomplished without incident.

Subsequently my hospital appointment letter arrived from the NHS [and here I am not seeking to kick a proverbial dead horse when it is down].

It advised that I now had an appointment at my local hospital ophthalmology clinic on [a specific date and time which need not concern us here but is some three and a half weeks hence].

It then continued as follows:

“INFORMATION FROM THE CLINIC:

This information is provided by the clinic for people attending appointments:

DO NOT ATTEND THE APPOINTMENT.

This is an appointment service only and your referral will be triaged by a consultant prior to an appointment being offered to you. You will be contacted by our Booking Team when your referral has been graded by the consultant.

CHANGING YOUR APPOINTMENT:

If you need to change or cancel this appointment, use one of the options below. You will need to provide your referral details.

[It then provides details of a website and – alternatively – a phone number by which the individual can register their need to change or cancel the appointment.“]

So – to summarise:

The NHS has given me an appointment at my local hospital Ophthalmology department – but has also ordered me not to attend it.

It has then stated that “our Booking Team” will contact me “when your referral has been graded by the consultant” (presumably the one who is going to conduct a triage assessment on me) …

However – and here some Rust readers maybe ahead of me – there are no explanations or details provided as to how the consultant is going to conduct their triage of me – firstly, on the face of it, apparently without even seeing me … and/or perhaps (secondly) without having first contacted me to arrange an appointment whereby they can do so!

As you may imagine, I now await further developments with interest but not much hope or expectation.