31 March 2002

Maybe it was here all along and I didn't notice it.  Maybe it is something that has developed because of some social or global development such as technology.  Whatever it is, I want to know when human beings stopped thinking, stopped taking initiatives.

Example:  Friday I got a call from a friend of mine that this site was down.  After checking around, I found out that it wasn't a temporary thing, not a down server, but the site itself was inactive.  I called Interland, who was hosting it, and asked them what the problem was.  "Your account status is frozen," said Farhan Mumtaz, the automaton I spoke with.  When I asked him why, he said it was because I didn't pay the bill.  Now, a year ago I had paid for a year of service (plus free time for signing up for a year), but I didn't know when it was set to expire.  Apparently, it was set to expire Friday.  I asked Farhan if I should have received a call or something from the sales department, seeing as how Interland was a corporation deriving income from people like me.  He responded with "an automated e-mail was sent to you on February 26th."  I told him that I never got it (which wasn't a surprise, considering that I had numerous instances where e-mails had been lost), to which he responded in perfect corporate pentameter, "an e-mail was sent to you."  He then told me that I would have to speak with billing, which was closed and would be open until Monday.

Now, if it was me in Farhan's shoes, I would have checked to see if it was possible to have one of my customer's service reinstated for at least a few days while the situation was sorted out, seeing as how I have an irate person who did not receive notification that his service was expiring.  No, not Mr. Mumtaz, he followed the corporate script to the letter.  Result:  I switched to Websitesource.  So, Interland, in its corporate mentality, lost me and my monthly fees because of Farhan not thinking outside the box.  Not that I was the one customer keeping their stock price where it was, and an Enron-like collapse is brewing after they lost my $300, but what the fuck?

This is not an isolated case.  Whether it's apathy toward life in general, ambivalence toward their employer, low self-esteem, minimal intelligence, or whatever, it seems that no one is willing to do any more than they absolutely have to in order to fulfill the basic duties proscribed in their job description.  I worked in a bar where the server left a pasta dish on the line under heat long enough to dry it out, and when the guest asked for some more sauce because it was dry, she told her, "Well, there really isn't a sauce on it, I don't know what to do."  The fact was that it was tossed in olive oil (ergo, no sauce), but if the dumb bitch hadn't let it sit there baking under the heater, everything would have been fine.  So, while she was telling the guest that there was nothing they could do, I walked over, took the dish, and told her that we would make her a new dish, it would just be three minutes.  How hard was that?

It's all a matter of taking care of what people want or need.  I've been a bartender for years, and if I just sat there and followed the company line, I'd have no regulars.  I'm basically a commissioned employee - I make a percentage of what I sell.  I have to think outside the box when something goes wrong.  Why can't someone working at Chase bank or AT&T do the same thing?  Why can't everyone realize that their job is to help the people they deal with and do whatever they can to resolve the problem, rather than say, "I'm sorry, that is not our policy"?

Maybe I'm just stupid.