Ever notice how the simplest things today become complicated? Call someone for a simple answer at work and no one can provide help but instead transfer you back and forth between the same departments as no one seems to know the answer to your question. Call your mobile phone company because every month the same bogus charge appears on your bill but the customer service representative isn’t trained to actually answer a question if it’s not posed EXACTLY as it’s stated on the training guide. If customer asks ‘this,’ answer ‘this way.’ It’s too bad customers aren’t provided with a list of questions exactly as they appear on those training guides because wording the question in any other way seems to completely confuse the representative. Banks are also a great joy but they like to blame incompetence on ‘the system’ rather than the cheap help they hire to fill seats in a call center.

Call a government office for help & you’re really asking for it. Not only will you probably be transferred from place to place to place to original place back to 10 other places but each person creatively gives you a different answer. What always amazes me is the variation of answers you can receive over a very basic question that has a very definite yes or no answer. Say you need to know how many months you may stay in a particular foreign country without a visa. You ring the local embassy, state you’re a US citizen & ask if you need a visa & if not, ask the duration of stay you are allowed without a visa & as a US passport holder. Now, for fun, call back at different times of the day & get a different person & odds are: you’ll get a different answer each time OR a very simple ‘I don’t know.’ I get thoroughly annoyed when my question is regarding something for which there is plainly stated policy, law, or regulation and for which there is only one correct answer. Just ONE concrete answer with NO room for interpretation. Therefore, how are 15 different answers possible? I wonder how something so simple can become SO complex but it seems to happen more often than not these days in a world dominated by incompetence.

I attribute today’s rampant incompetence to this ‘politically correct’ movement in which we dare not tell anyone they’re wrong or stupid or screwing something up royally because we just *might* hurt their feelings. Ahhhhhhhhh. We can’t possibly risk hurting someone’s feelings even if their stupidity may one day hurt or kill someone. I can see not rubbing someone’s nose in a mistake but what is this nonsense? How can a person know they’re doing something incorrectly or obviously stupid if someone doesn’t pull them aside & say: “Hey, Bob, you really shouldn’t smoke cigarettes while you’re pumping gas there. See, gasoline is flammable & that lit cigarette is a flame & together, it can go boom!” No, we don’t want to hurt Bob’s feelings if Bob’s too stupid to realize gas + cigarette might equal disaster for Bob & many other people. Hurting Bob’s feelings is not politically correct but it’s ok if Bob & his stupidity cause a major explosion. At least his feelings won’t be hurt.

I love too how no one seems to know anything and/or lacks basic common sense. Most of the time it’s due to the fact they’re either incredibly stupid, not listening, or don’t read. I’ve interviewed for jobs when the recruiter is HOLDING my resume & then will ask me if I’ve ever done this or that when it’s plainly stated or missing from the piece of paper in their hand. Please don’t ask me if I’ve ever worked as an investment banker when there is no reference to such on my resume if you’re going to interview me. I’m sorry but you can’t read & you’re going to determine if I’m qualified to do a job? I can read; therefore I’m already one step ahead of you but you’re evaluating me? Ironic. Maybe this is why we have incompetent people doing bad jobs………….because those that hired them were also incompetent.

I often wonder how much collective time each adult wastes trying to complete simple tasks due to incompetence of the people that are supposedly trained to answer our simple questions. While simple, straight forward questions, it does not seem limited to trivial arenas. If I ask the theatre attendant what time the next showing of Harry Potter begins & she makes a mistake, odds are no one dies. It may be annoying but not potentially lethal. However, we have incompetence everywhere from retailers, where it’s mostly just frustrating, to the healthcare industry where idiots are being trusted with people’s lives just because it’s politically incorrect to upset them by firing them for making a mistake that may have killed someone simply because we don’t want to hurt their feelings.

To this idea, we cannot help but say………….whatthefak??????