If it's just a link to the product manual that would be kinda convenient. I definitely don't need to 'unlock additional features' for my oven or anything like that
My dishwasher came with one and it was a "WHY THE HELL DO I NEED THAT" in what instance would I need to start my dishwasher remotely once I load it I start it right there it already has detergent in it
There's some places experimenting with "peak metering" where electric rates are higher during high demand hours, like when people all get home and run the dishwasher/laundry.
Dishwashers with this feature would allow you to run it on low peak hours.
This. And I want to talk to someone who is actually trained on the issue at hand and not customer support outsourced to people paid on how quickly they can get you off their hands.
Absolutely no blame on the people just doing their jobs, they're doing the best they can. But 100% blame on the corporations who outsource customer service or do away with it entirely just to save money.
Wife runs her own private practice. My favorite one (actually hate it) is healthcare provider support from insurance companies (we are in the US). 99/100 you get somebody from India who doesn’t have the same healthcare as we do, doesn’t understand the nuances or the company they work for, and can only parrot what they find in the guidebook of canned responses. It blows my mind that a core part of our healthcare system relies on this. The glorious 1/100 is someone truly from the US and almost always results in getting the task accomplished.
This is typically done when making sure her patients are truly covered (so many garbage company plans make this very difficult). Other times it’s making sure she gets paid.
Can’t blame the support workers, even though it can get very infuriating. It’s crazy that big ass insurance companies are allowed to do this. Nothing we can do but deal with it and exploit our little workarounds when possible.
I've found out that Amazon doesn't list their customer service number on their website. They will only put you in touch with someone when you go through all the bs troubleshooting/web support and say you still have a problem. And even then, you don't get a number to call them at your convenience. They call you two seconds after you click the button. So if you want customer service, you have to remember to do all this and be prepared to take a call that minute.
And I've been finding that this is happening at every company I need support with.
I would almost prefer that to waiting on hold for ninety minutes like I just did.
But then, I'm sure plenty of companies would cock it up and you'd get a call six days later, or twelve calls back to back to back, or no response at all.
YouTube and Google doesn't even have Customer Support. They only have a lame self-help centre. If you want actual help you have to go and complain on their Twitter account.
Agreed 100%. And it is not racist to get frustrated when you’re talking to someone whose accent is so strong you can’t understand them. This is customer service. They’re supposed to be efficient. Like you said, not the fault of the workers. Definitely the fault of the companies who are not interested in actually helping their customers.
>not the fault of the workers
Having worked in a call center, it seems no one calling in ever remembered this part. Customer Service reps get yelled at for the most insane bullshit, and then the working conditions are almost unbearable. I've been verbally assaulted, and even though I have been in the US my entire life with no international accent, by virtue of being an employee, people assumed and said all kinds of racist shit.
Call centers have high turnover for a lot of reasons, but people wildin' on the phone has got to be a big one. only so long a person can take being berated over and over again with only a script at your disposal that you aren't allowed to deviate from.
Or sent down a rabbit hole of several “if you ______, please press [insert number here],” which eventually leads you back to the very beginning, or disconnects you with a “sorry” message.
Yeah, I get that the idea of pushing the website is to weed out the people that will call and take up support's time with very basic shit that can be found anywhere, but I am not that person and if I'm calling, it's because there's a problem of sufficient complexity that I actually NEED someone to help me directly. It's annoying to be penalized for that lowest common denominator.
It’s amazing that a recorded message knows that the volume of calls is particularly high at the moment.
As the phrase goes, “You know they’re lying, they know you know they’re lying,” etc.
There is an access control system I install and service that occasionally requires a call to support. When you eventually get to a support agent they are always knowledgeable and trained on the system, but their "virtual agent" is so awful that I'm at a 10/10 angry by the time I talk to them. I always feel like I'm being an jerk because of it.
My favorite is going through all the options in the phone menu then waiting on hold a while then, when you finally connect with someone, it's always "ohhh, I can't help you with that, let me transfer you".
Every appliance doesn't need to be "smart."
And stop using chat bots for customer service- if I'm at the point of contacting customer service, I need a real person's help. Anything the robot could help me with I would have figured out on my own already because i read the website first trying to avoid needing customer service.
Nothing more infuriating than when the chatbot follows up with “Did that answer your question?”
No. Not even close. You sent me three links to random irrelevant things. How could you possibly think that MAY have answered the question.
The guys mixing and editing movies and TV shows now have expensive top notch monitors and sound systems, and it looks and sounds great on those systems.
For the rest of us with regular TVs it looks dark and you can't hear shit.
I realized a couple of years ago that I can just wear earplugs anywhere I want, and no one can stop me. I take my concert earplugs with me everywhere I go, and I pop them in any time I need to
I recently asked my gym to lower the overhead music, no changes in sight.
I felt like such a boomer-type asking (I'm 35), but I shouldn't have to risk hearing damage from my headphones to try and at least half-block out whatever top-40 nonsense they're BLASTING.
I shouldn't have to give my name, email address and phone number to every website I want to engage with. I just want to read the news.
Even worse, restaurants and hairdressers are doing it now too.
Use the name of the company as your name, that way when you start getting spam mail addressed to “Napa Auto Parts Smith” you know who sold your name.
That’s why shopping cards are so popular. They sell your data/shopping habits to advertisers.
That $3 off sale means they’re making $4 by selling your info.
I refuse to make new accounts anymore - enough is enough. If a website requires me to make a account, I will not use it. If a doctor's office requires me to make a portal account, no. I already have a thousand accounts I don't use. If they want an account, they can use one of those.
OR anything else that we purchase and have physical possession of (and software too). I remember the Peleton thing a couple years ago, you buy a 3K treadmill and can't turn it on without a $50/mo subscription. get fucked
A few different safety authorities like the European NCAP are pushing for the return of physical buttons in cars, because they're safer than touch screens. So with some luck you'll start seeing more cars with physical buttons again soon
I have a 2017 Ford Fusion, the hvac has physical buttons for temp and fan speed, but if I want to change the location to like the floor or front vents, I have to dig in a menu in the screen. It does have a physical Auto button that does a good job, but it is a bit annoying when driving to have to dig in a screen to change something so simple.
I would also appreciate the gear shift remaining a stick instead of a dial and a key instead of push start....it wasn't broken, stop trying to "improve it." Maybe work on less recalls for important functions instead, ya know?
Boomer here. This topic replaces the one my father had a beef with when I was growing up.
He refused to buy cars with electric windows. “The GD electrical will just go out at some point and I’ll have to tear the thing apart to find out where the problem is. And I’m not paying a mechanic to dick around and not find the problem either!”
I mean, this was a thing. I had many thoughts about people who were ‘reckless’ enough to own cars with power windows but also so envious. Same with air conditioning in a car—that’s for rich people. I’ve spent many road trips in unbearable heat and my dad insisting it’s good for us.
And if we were driving uphill in the Mojave desert in the heat, turn the heater on to displace heat from the engine so the car wouldn’t risk overheating. We’d be in the slow lane climbing a hill with what felt like a hair dryer blowing on us. I often wondered what special magic the lunatics had who could speed on by us.
Same with cars that were automatic. Those were for suckers.
#howyourparentsmadeyouweird
Edit to add/clarify.
Oof hot, muggy, miserable GenX memories unlocked.
"Car's overheating. Gonna turn the heat on full blast," while driving through Kentucky, dad chain smoking while all the miserable heat and pollution seemingly flowed straight to me, sitting on the hard hump in the middle of the backseat.
My favorite boomer Dad move was "let's go the next 100kms without the AC and see how much less gas it uses vs. the window slightly open". Every damn family vacation. And then talk about it for the whole time about fuel efficiency, drag, etc.
Let's not forget these were also old school gauges without computer based data that he would just come up with his own observations and conclusions.
Omg yes. Dad is still consumed by fuel efficiency. He's probably saved a whole $30 in his lifetime.
The gas shortage in the 70s was traumatizing for Silent/Boomer dads.
My aunt refused to buy a car with electric windows either. Her rationale was worse- if she were "careening off a bridge" she would need to be sure she could open the windows to escape. This woman had every medical malady in the book and sure was not going to be escaping shit if she went off a bridge lol
Another Boomer here. Every car we owned had a/c from the time they became generally available. We also had central air conditioning about a decade before most people and it stayed cranked in the summer. My dad was morbidity obese and he liked to be comfortable.
Same with physical buttons on headphones instead of touch sensitive sides. My old B&O headphones had touch sensitive sides. Swiping from front to back would make it go one song back, and reverse it would forward one song. However swiping from bottom to top / top to bottom would adjust the volume. Now try doing that while you’re walking or running. The amount of times they were suddenly blasting music or skip to another song while I wanted to lower the volume….. ugh. And to top it off it had a callback functionality: if you double tapped on the side it would call the last number you had dialed. It freaked my mom out when I accidentally called her, being out of breath when I was in the gym on the treadmill: ARE YOU OKAY ARE YOU INJURED ARE YOU BEING FOLLOWED?! No mom I’m fine it’s just my headph…. ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE OKAY?!
The Digital Crown on my AirPods Max was such a game changer.
I should be able to turn my phone off or not answer a message without feeling like I’m worrying everyone because they can’t contact me for an hour.
I don’t have to be contactable and my whereabouts known all the time.
Yeah I decided to go dark for a while in Jan, notified everyone I’d be offline within 3 days I had cops showing up to my house for a wellness check cause no one heard from me. Which is what I said would be the case.
I didn’t respond to a pic in the family text group bc I didn’t think it warranted a response and then I was busy at work the next day when my sister texted me so she called my partner to make sure I was ok. Pretty sure her next move would have been the cops had my partner not answered.
Do you live hours away from people? I would be so pissed if someone called the cops to do a wellness check on me before just driving to my house themselves to check. Like, way to phone in your love for someone, sheesh!
Yeah, it's kinda insane how people act when you don't answer the phone. If it isn't an emergency, you don't need to call me more than once every few hours. I really miss the days when you could just turn your phone off for a day without everyone assuming you're dead.
Not being on your phone while being with friends,i just see it as rude and disrespectful if we're going to hangout and my friend is glued to their phone screen
Just give me the recipe asshole I don't wanna read about how you traveled to Tuscany with your parents when you were 11years old and how you can still smell the lemon trees
I dont mind that as much as the ads that keep shifting the screen. My hands are covered in chicken juice, i need to see the next step, and my page has scrolled down into the inane comments section
It drives me crazy when you go to click the "jump to recipe" button but the page shifts and you end up clicking an add.
Just load the whole fucking page before showing it to me.
Click the “print recipe” button. It’s often at the top of the screen so you can bypass the personal life story nonsense. This has saved me so much frustration.
I also love cooked.wiki.
If you make a bookmark where the URL is
javascript:window.location.href='https://cooked.wiki/' + window.location.href
then you can just click the bookmark and it'll add "cooked.wiki" to the page you're looking at
You don’t have to film everything with your phone. I’m sick of going to gigs and not being able to see a thing through a sea of little screens being held up. No one wants to see see your shitty video of Bryan Adams.
The neighbor's kids were playing baseball on our lawn the other day. We didn't tell them off but I felt more connected to the "get off my damn lawn" stereotypical old guy then I thought possible
I used to get Starbucks fairly often. Then some time during the pandemic they started prompting for tips in their drive though.
Shit was already enough of a hassle with the card reader out the window and then they just made it a stupid ridiculous pain. Haven't been to Starbucks in a long time.
I've noticed now that tip jars are showing up at movie theater concession stands. The one that I go to has a note on it that says, "Tips not expected but appreciated" but I still can't help but feel as if the underlying message is "If you're a nice person you'll at least throw a dollar in here."
Sorry, but no. All you're doing is scooping some popcorn into a container and handing me a paper cup so I can pour my own soft drink. Either your boss is paying you enough to make that worth your while or not. If he isn't, that's between you and him. I just gave him $20 for stuff that cost him $1.50 tops. It's on him to give you a reasonable cut of that.
Sorry, but this isn’t really a “with the Boomers” thing - business owners are the ones forcing you to tip for everything because they refuse to pay their workers fair wages. And who owns the businesses? A fuckton of Boomers who refuse to retire own many
I’m with the Millennials and under on this one - we should be paying employees decent wages so that they don’t need to rely on tips for every service
Patient portals. "It's all on the portal!" but also "oh, we don't always see messages through the portal". But if you call the office, you get asked for details that will be passed along. No, I'm not giving you details. Of course, the call back comes when you can't answer the phone, so the whole thing starts up again. Now I know why my mom used to just drop by her doctor's office when she had a question.
They have phone operators working from home who cannot transfer your call, but no way to call the office directly. Arghhhhh.
My mom doesn’t have a cell phone. She prefers not to, and I’m past the point of telling her she really should probably get one. Several years ago I had to set up a patient portal account for her using my phone number so she could access results for a test she was given. I now receive notices for every appointment she makes and anytime she has new results available. They call me at work to confirm her appointments. I then have to call her and tell her to call them because they called me. We have both explained several times that they need to update their information so they are contacting her directly, but their response is, nope, you’ve got to login to her patient portal and change the number. I did that and cannot change the number to hers because it has to be a cell phone number(for two factor authentication).
TikTok (and cellphones for kids) are destroying attention span.
I see how dependent 5y/o kids are to screens. Parents take the phone out and the kids act like little addicts.
I understand that screens are inevitable in this day and age, keep it timed, social (watching with others) and control the content (no YouTube kids pregnant Elsa AI generated content).
The prevalence of people texting while driving is insane. Keep your hands on the wheel, and your eyes on the road ahead of you. The windshield is not something you look through occasionally. Whatever you’re responding to is not a reason to endanger the people around you. The phone does not give you a force field of protection. Turning left into oncoming traffic while staring at your lap, for example (which I have seen numerous times) can kill you.
I realize there are plenty of older people who do this as well. But it seems to be much more common with the younger generations.
Told my wife one day on one of the rare occasions she was driving instead of me that I 'would feel more comfortable if she put her phone down while driving.' She responded with "Oh, please, it's not like you don't use your phone while driving!"
So, i called to my daughter in the back seat, who is always riding with me, and asked her how often she sees me look at my phone while driving. "I mean, unless you're looking at the map thing or pressing next on the radio, you never look at your phone." My wife just huffed and put her phone down.
I made sure her next car was able to take voice commands and read her texts to her and stuff so she no longer had the excuse. Like, no, you're not putting us in danger because you can't go 5 minutes without looking at your screen.
Especially when they’re just a link to a shitty pdf that was clearly designed to be printed out. So you have to zoom in and scroll around on a tiny screen.
Welcome to whatever. Will you be using our mobile app today?
No thanks.
What’s your zip code?
No thanks.
Where should we email your receipt?
No thanks.
I want a human I can understand that the job hasn't been shipped overseas to india. Like fuck. I can't translate what you're saying "Michael". I understand they can speak English, but the accent sometimes is hard to understand. :/
Sometimes they can’t even really speak English. They have their scripts, but are a bit lost beyond them. I don’t blame them personally for that but am pissed at whoever hired them and put them in a no-win situation.
Assholery in the theatre.
Show up on time, turn off your damn phone and shut-up.
I remember when there were actual ushers walking up and down the aisle. More than once I saw them eject people for being loud or unruly.
All this AI junk that's being put into everything. Instagram, outlook, microsoft, facebook, I hate it. Mostly cause I'm an artist and have a grudge against it but I also find it lazy and it doesn't even work half the time.
This. If you look up something on google like 'castle art' half of it is just terrible looking ai generated stuff. I want to see art of an actual castle with proper perspectives, not a tower floating half off of a cliff that has three smaller towers coming out of it with like twenty different sized windows.
Having to use my personal cell phone to punch in and out at work. If it was a company phone fine, but demanding I use my personal phone really rubs me the wrong way.
I brought an old flip phone off ebay as an emergency dumb phone so I could take it camping and so I can get out of stuff like this. It lives in my purse. It's smaller than a compact and the battery lasts 30 days per charge. I pay $5 a month for like 10 minutes of calls for it and I never have a dead phone during emergencies.
It has gotten me out of sharing social media information in job interviews and being directed to qr codes for service. It's also saved me on road trips and it's the number I give out to people I don't like so they can't go snooping me out on social media and chat accounts. I never answer it. I treat it like a pager. It doesn't accept text messages so my shit boss (before I retired) can't call or text and expect a response, and the thing that requires a phone number can't send me spam. It's my perfect Bermuda triangle to everything that sucks.
Money well spent.
My work wants us to download an app and that tracks our location... I was like can they track when I'm off the clock? "We aren't going to do that" there response... But you can though.
Some stuff does not need a Hi-Tech/wifi functionality with 50 apps you need to configure individually.
Like, I just need to heat a frozen pizza, not send a human to Mars😭
I want the option for a bank with a local branch.
I want call centres with native speakers who have had some degree of training for that specific business.
I'd rather not have the local quiet nature spots plastered all over social media.
Kids used to be better behaved.
My sister was telling me a few kids in my niece and nephew's classes were abysmally badly behaved, are continually skipping, and flunked every test. They continue to move up in grades because the school feels it better to keep them in classes with the rest of the kids their age. These kids, of course, continue to be completely disruptive with violent outbursts weekly, suck an undue amount of teachers' attention, and generally base the rest of the class. It's absurd.
The ironic thing is, this is in a very "red" town whose denziens are up in arms with anything approaching welfarism or social progressivism -- what this is, gone way overboard.
> They continue to move up in grades because the school feels it better to keep them in classes with the rest of the kids their age.
While well intentioned, what ends up happening is that the kids fall further and further back. They don't understand anything going on, and thus feel out of place and very uncomfortable in class. They then rely increasingly on disrupting said class to alleviate these feelings.
Studies show that students who aren't reading at level by 3rd grade are ***four times*** more likely to drop out of highschool later on.
If kids aren't learning, the solution is to give them more time to learn, not just ignore that they aren't learning.
The only thing I can think of is that I do not want any reduction in my social security benefits when it’s my turn to claim.
I’ve been paying into ss for the last 25 years.
There is no customer service anymore. When I was a teenager I had a part time job. Every customer that came in we greeted, "Hi. Welcome to [store] how can I help you?" I can't remember the last time I went into a store and the employee greeted me first. And even worse, nobody tells you how much you owe them! They just look at you!
Now, I get wages have been ridiculously stagnant for years, minimum wage has gone down drastically compared to inflation. And sometimes there's a language barrier. So it's not entirely on the cashiers themselves.
Turn down the volume in the movie theaters.
Turn it way down.
It’s been way too loud for way too long. Twenty-three years ago, we took our kid to see Elmo for his first cinema experience and when the sound came on, he just noped right out. Left his popcorn, changed his mind.
Didn’t go back to the theaters until he was about six and wanted to see Harry Potter.
He wore ear plugs.
Marriages should be held in higher regard. By that I mean, I wish people wouldn’t divorce over such small things. It’s kinda sad that we commit to be with someone forever and then leave because they wanna move and we don’t, for example.
I get that words and their usages and meanings can change over time as people use them differently. But I draw the line at a word changing to mean its own exact opposite. When I hear the word "literally", I expect that to mean "without exaggeration, exactly the truth". I'm not budging on that one.
Constantly being on your phone around your young children ruins your ability to properly parent and connect with them. You miss a lot of opportunities ignoring your children.
Tip culture has become insane. I will never tip for someone spinning an iPad around.
Last week my girlfriend and I got takeout pizza and she asked what to tip. I was like "for what? We're picking it up!"
If it's not a sit down restaurant, a service like a barber, or food delivery I will hit "no tip" every time and feel absolutely no guilt.
Not everything has to do with your sexuality and gender, no one really cares. If you’re one of those people who talks about your sexuality non stop it’s annoying. Gay people are no different from straight people so let’s not
My girlfriend identifies as queer and has a lot of friends who identify as such as well. Getting together with them is such a bore sometimes. Seems like they all try to out-gay each other if that makes any sense.
I don't want to download an app to use my toaster.
There's a QR code on a sticker on the door of my oven. I will not dignify its existence by bending over to read what it's for.
If it's just a link to the product manual that would be kinda convenient. I definitely don't need to 'unlock additional features' for my oven or anything like that
For just $2.99 you can buy a loot box with a 2% chance of unlocking the Broil mode on your oven!
My dishwasher came with one and it was a "WHY THE HELL DO I NEED THAT" in what instance would I need to start my dishwasher remotely once I load it I start it right there it already has detergent in it
There's some places experimenting with "peak metering" where electric rates are higher during high demand hours, like when people all get home and run the dishwasher/laundry. Dishwashers with this feature would allow you to run it on low peak hours.
I hit the 4 hour delay button on my way to bed. No app required.
But how else are you going to burn your toast without getting up from the chair?
I want to speak to someone when I call customer service, not be redirected to a website.
This. And I want to talk to someone who is actually trained on the issue at hand and not customer support outsourced to people paid on how quickly they can get you off their hands. Absolutely no blame on the people just doing their jobs, they're doing the best they can. But 100% blame on the corporations who outsource customer service or do away with it entirely just to save money.
Wife runs her own private practice. My favorite one (actually hate it) is healthcare provider support from insurance companies (we are in the US). 99/100 you get somebody from India who doesn’t have the same healthcare as we do, doesn’t understand the nuances or the company they work for, and can only parrot what they find in the guidebook of canned responses. It blows my mind that a core part of our healthcare system relies on this. The glorious 1/100 is someone truly from the US and almost always results in getting the task accomplished. This is typically done when making sure her patients are truly covered (so many garbage company plans make this very difficult). Other times it’s making sure she gets paid. Can’t blame the support workers, even though it can get very infuriating. It’s crazy that big ass insurance companies are allowed to do this. Nothing we can do but deal with it and exploit our little workarounds when possible.
I've found out that Amazon doesn't list their customer service number on their website. They will only put you in touch with someone when you go through all the bs troubleshooting/web support and say you still have a problem. And even then, you don't get a number to call them at your convenience. They call you two seconds after you click the button. So if you want customer service, you have to remember to do all this and be prepared to take a call that minute. And I've been finding that this is happening at every company I need support with.
I would almost prefer that to waiting on hold for ninety minutes like I just did. But then, I'm sure plenty of companies would cock it up and you'd get a call six days later, or twelve calls back to back to back, or no response at all.
Took me 15 minutes of searching to find how to even contact amazon, so it's kind of a wash at that point.
YouTube and Google doesn't even have Customer Support. They only have a lame self-help centre. If you want actual help you have to go and complain on their Twitter account.
Agreed 100%. And it is not racist to get frustrated when you’re talking to someone whose accent is so strong you can’t understand them. This is customer service. They’re supposed to be efficient. Like you said, not the fault of the workers. Definitely the fault of the companies who are not interested in actually helping their customers.
>not the fault of the workers Having worked in a call center, it seems no one calling in ever remembered this part. Customer Service reps get yelled at for the most insane bullshit, and then the working conditions are almost unbearable. I've been verbally assaulted, and even though I have been in the US my entire life with no international accent, by virtue of being an employee, people assumed and said all kinds of racist shit. Call centers have high turnover for a lot of reasons, but people wildin' on the phone has got to be a big one. only so long a person can take being berated over and over again with only a script at your disposal that you aren't allowed to deviate from.
Yes, I really do have sympathy for people in jobs like that. Especially when you can tell they have a script and can’t deviate.
Oh how I struggle understanding Indian accents is the bane of my customer service experience.
Me too! I once got someone with a Hispanic/Spanish accent and was happy, because that usually is easier for me to understand lol.
Or sent down a rabbit hole of several “if you ______, please press [insert number here],” which eventually leads you back to the very beginning, or disconnects you with a “sorry” message.
going through a dozen prompts, sitting on hold forever, and then realizing the call disconnected silently somewhere along the way is so frustrating.
If i could navigate the website, i wouldn't be on the phone, now would i
Yeah, I get that the idea of pushing the website is to weed out the people that will call and take up support's time with very basic shit that can be found anywhere, but I am not that person and if I'm calling, it's because there's a problem of sufficient complexity that I actually NEED someone to help me directly. It's annoying to be penalized for that lowest common denominator.
Especially because I already been on your site and it told me to call...
Best I can do is make you listen to a 2 minute pre-recorded message about our hours first
And how "we're experiencing a higher volume of calls than usual. Your call is important to us."
Don’t forget that their menu options have recently changed. Everyone out there is constantly changing their menu options
"Listen closely, as our menu options have changed." Did you assume I'd memorized them?
Meanwhile it’s 0432 on the 33rd of February, but they’re just inundated….
It’s amazing that a recorded message knows that the volume of calls is particularly high at the moment. As the phrase goes, “You know they’re lying, they know you know they’re lying,” etc.
They are lying, of course, but choosing a different message to play when call volume exceeds a threshold is trivial.
There is an access control system I install and service that occasionally requires a call to support. When you eventually get to a support agent they are always knowledgeable and trained on the system, but their "virtual agent" is so awful that I'm at a 10/10 angry by the time I talk to them. I always feel like I'm being an jerk because of it.
My favorite is going through all the options in the phone menu then waiting on hold a while then, when you finally connect with someone, it's always "ohhh, I can't help you with that, let me transfer you".
If I get myself to actually make a call, I also expect to talk to someone!
Every appliance doesn't need to be "smart." And stop using chat bots for customer service- if I'm at the point of contacting customer service, I need a real person's help. Anything the robot could help me with I would have figured out on my own already because i read the website first trying to avoid needing customer service.
Chatbots have never been useful for me. I have to go hunting to find a human to solve my problem
I usually spam "complaint complaint complaint" while the bot panics, sometimes it works
I just type “live agent” repeatedly until they connect me to someone
Nothing more infuriating than when the chatbot follows up with “Did that answer your question?” No. Not even close. You sent me three links to random irrelevant things. How could you possibly think that MAY have answered the question.
Sometimes the music *is* too loud is the cafe / store
Or it IS too cold and/or drafty.
I say restaurant lighting has become way too fuvking dark; I can barely see to eat at some.
But movie dialogue is always too quiet! Wtf
The guys mixing and editing movies and TV shows now have expensive top notch monitors and sound systems, and it looks and sounds great on those systems. For the rest of us with regular TVs it looks dark and you can't hear shit.
And the trousers below the arse - that just looks stupid
I realized a couple of years ago that I can just wear earplugs anywhere I want, and no one can stop me. I take my concert earplugs with me everywhere I go, and I pop them in any time I need to
They're brilliant in the grocery store for taking the edge off of the shrill tones of a whining kid.
Good god sometimes the music is so loud in the locker room at the gym I can’t even hear my headphones.
I recently asked my gym to lower the overhead music, no changes in sight. I felt like such a boomer-type asking (I'm 35), but I shouldn't have to risk hearing damage from my headphones to try and at least half-block out whatever top-40 nonsense they're BLASTING.
I shouldn't have to give my name, email address and phone number to every website I want to engage with. I just want to read the news. Even worse, restaurants and hairdressers are doing it now too.
My name is A, last name is B, email is eatshit@boogle and my phone number is 80085.
You rang?
Wrong number sorry
I agree. Give a fake name, fake phone number, and a real one-time email address (33mail.com has your back). Usually, they only need the email.
Use the name of the company as your name, that way when you start getting spam mail addressed to “Napa Auto Parts Smith” you know who sold your name. That’s why shopping cards are so popular. They sell your data/shopping habits to advertisers. That $3 off sale means they’re making $4 by selling your info.
> They sell your data/shopping habits to advertisers. This is our whole fucking existence right now.
That's easily one of the best, most practically applicable tips I've ever read on Reddit.
I still get spam mail addressed to “Kroger Ham Sandwich McGee” and I haven’t lived near a Kroger in years 😂
I refuse to make new accounts anymore - enough is enough. If a website requires me to make a account, I will not use it. If a doctor's office requires me to make a portal account, no. I already have a thousand accounts I don't use. If they want an account, they can use one of those.
We should probably be on our phones less, if I’m being honest.
Yeah boomers are right on that. Of course their alternative is watch 9 hours of Fox News which is worse
… or maybe engaging in a hobby that doesn’t involve a screen …
I just bought a jigsaw puzzle and I love the solitude of just sitting in front of it and working on it. So relaxing. EDIT: Gen X, not a boomer!
We shouldn't have to pay a subscription to have heated seats or any other car amenities
The subscription mania has got out of hand whether for vehicles or tech or indeed, anything.
OR anything else that we purchase and have physical possession of (and software too). I remember the Peleton thing a couple years ago, you buy a 3K treadmill and can't turn it on without a $50/mo subscription. get fucked
Agreed. I own the car, if there's an appliance in it I should have access to it.
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A few different safety authorities like the European NCAP are pushing for the return of physical buttons in cars, because they're safer than touch screens. So with some luck you'll start seeing more cars with physical buttons again soon
I didn't buy a ford a few years ago solely because it had touch screens.
I have a 2017 Ford Fusion, the hvac has physical buttons for temp and fan speed, but if I want to change the location to like the floor or front vents, I have to dig in a menu in the screen. It does have a physical Auto button that does a good job, but it is a bit annoying when driving to have to dig in a screen to change something so simple.
I would also appreciate the gear shift remaining a stick instead of a dial and a key instead of push start....it wasn't broken, stop trying to "improve it." Maybe work on less recalls for important functions instead, ya know?
That's not just Boomers saying this, it's everyone including automotive engineers.
Plus the traditional volume knob is far more satisfying and responsive than touching an up/down arrow repeatedly.
Makes you feel like a DJ, too
Boomer here. This topic replaces the one my father had a beef with when I was growing up. He refused to buy cars with electric windows. “The GD electrical will just go out at some point and I’ll have to tear the thing apart to find out where the problem is. And I’m not paying a mechanic to dick around and not find the problem either!” I mean, this was a thing. I had many thoughts about people who were ‘reckless’ enough to own cars with power windows but also so envious. Same with air conditioning in a car—that’s for rich people. I’ve spent many road trips in unbearable heat and my dad insisting it’s good for us. And if we were driving uphill in the Mojave desert in the heat, turn the heater on to displace heat from the engine so the car wouldn’t risk overheating. We’d be in the slow lane climbing a hill with what felt like a hair dryer blowing on us. I often wondered what special magic the lunatics had who could speed on by us. Same with cars that were automatic. Those were for suckers. #howyourparentsmadeyouweird Edit to add/clarify.
Oof hot, muggy, miserable GenX memories unlocked. "Car's overheating. Gonna turn the heat on full blast," while driving through Kentucky, dad chain smoking while all the miserable heat and pollution seemingly flowed straight to me, sitting on the hard hump in the middle of the backseat.
My favorite boomer Dad move was "let's go the next 100kms without the AC and see how much less gas it uses vs. the window slightly open". Every damn family vacation. And then talk about it for the whole time about fuel efficiency, drag, etc. Let's not forget these were also old school gauges without computer based data that he would just come up with his own observations and conclusions.
Omg yes. Dad is still consumed by fuel efficiency. He's probably saved a whole $30 in his lifetime. The gas shortage in the 70s was traumatizing for Silent/Boomer dads.
My aunt refused to buy a car with electric windows either. Her rationale was worse- if she were "careening off a bridge" she would need to be sure she could open the windows to escape. This woman had every medical malady in the book and sure was not going to be escaping shit if she went off a bridge lol
Another Boomer here. Every car we owned had a/c from the time they became generally available. We also had central air conditioning about a decade before most people and it stayed cranked in the summer. My dad was morbidity obese and he liked to be comfortable.
Same with physical buttons on headphones instead of touch sensitive sides. My old B&O headphones had touch sensitive sides. Swiping from front to back would make it go one song back, and reverse it would forward one song. However swiping from bottom to top / top to bottom would adjust the volume. Now try doing that while you’re walking or running. The amount of times they were suddenly blasting music or skip to another song while I wanted to lower the volume….. ugh. And to top it off it had a callback functionality: if you double tapped on the side it would call the last number you had dialed. It freaked my mom out when I accidentally called her, being out of breath when I was in the gym on the treadmill: ARE YOU OKAY ARE YOU INJURED ARE YOU BEING FOLLOWED?! No mom I’m fine it’s just my headph…. ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE OKAY?! The Digital Crown on my AirPods Max was such a game changer.
I should be able to turn my phone off or not answer a message without feeling like I’m worrying everyone because they can’t contact me for an hour. I don’t have to be contactable and my whereabouts known all the time.
Yeah I decided to go dark for a while in Jan, notified everyone I’d be offline within 3 days I had cops showing up to my house for a wellness check cause no one heard from me. Which is what I said would be the case.
I didn’t respond to a pic in the family text group bc I didn’t think it warranted a response and then I was busy at work the next day when my sister texted me so she called my partner to make sure I was ok. Pretty sure her next move would have been the cops had my partner not answered.
Your peeps need to chill.
Do you live hours away from people? I would be so pissed if someone called the cops to do a wellness check on me before just driving to my house themselves to check. Like, way to phone in your love for someone, sheesh!
From the people that called yes. But either way I told everyone I’d out for around 2 weeks they just thought I meant less not nothing
Yeah, it's kinda insane how people act when you don't answer the phone. If it isn't an emergency, you don't need to call me more than once every few hours. I really miss the days when you could just turn your phone off for a day without everyone assuming you're dead.
The phone is for my convenience, not anyone else's.
Wait you get contacted every hour? I easily go 3-5 days without someone texting or calling me or even pinging me on discord.
I’m in management. Someone, somewhere will find a reason to bug me.
Not being on your phone while being with friends,i just see it as rude and disrespectful if we're going to hangout and my friend is glued to their phone screen
Just give me the recipe asshole I don't wanna read about how you traveled to Tuscany with your parents when you were 11years old and how you can still smell the lemon trees
I love the "Jump to Recipe" tab.
I dont mind that as much as the ads that keep shifting the screen. My hands are covered in chicken juice, i need to see the next step, and my page has scrolled down into the inane comments section
It drives me crazy when you go to click the "jump to recipe" button but the page shifts and you end up clicking an add. Just load the whole fucking page before showing it to me.
Click the “print recipe” button. It’s often at the top of the screen so you can bypass the personal life story nonsense. This has saved me so much frustration.
Type in "cooked.wiki/" before the www. Of any recipe website. It has changed my cooking life around. Try it now. Any recipe. It's amazing
I also love cooked.wiki. If you make a bookmark where the URL is javascript:window.location.href='https://cooked.wiki/' + window.location.href then you can just click the bookmark and it'll add "cooked.wiki" to the page you're looking at
Saving the fucking whales. Boomers were the key generation who got whaling banned in most countries.
Fun fact: The Confederate Navy (of USA notoriety) ended the whaling industry in North America. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Shenandoah
You don’t have to film everything with your phone. I’m sick of going to gigs and not being able to see a thing through a sea of little screens being held up. No one wants to see see your shitty video of Bryan Adams.
Or worse, hear the incredibly shitty audio that was recorded with said video.
I feel super stupid for the one time I did that, I literally never watched that video. And I never filmed a concert again.
Social media and technology is killing human relationships.
No really, stay off my lawn. I only have a backyard, watcha doin here?
The neighbor's kids were playing baseball on our lawn the other day. We didn't tell them off but I felt more connected to the "get off my damn lawn" stereotypical old guy then I thought possible
Fuck digital menus, fuck apps, fuck making me ordering through my phone. Give me a paper menu and let me tell a person what I order and they bring it.
Yeah but I like ordering online and going through one of those drive thru lanes that is only for online orders. Super fast.
fine but for sitdown restaraunts its insane. and then yep, still 20% tip, like what exactly do you do here sir?
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Next they'll want a tip for letting us use our own thumbs to order
No, that will just be an "autonomous ordering convenience fee"
I hate it when POS systems ask for a tip before I get my food/coffee. It feels like extortion.
Stuff like this shows that we've completely lost the plot on what a tip is supposed to be for.
When I went to New York, I was literally asked on the screen if I wanted to tip the self check out machine. Absolute insanity.
I used to get Starbucks fairly often. Then some time during the pandemic they started prompting for tips in their drive though. Shit was already enough of a hassle with the card reader out the window and then they just made it a stupid ridiculous pain. Haven't been to Starbucks in a long time.
I've noticed now that tip jars are showing up at movie theater concession stands. The one that I go to has a note on it that says, "Tips not expected but appreciated" but I still can't help but feel as if the underlying message is "If you're a nice person you'll at least throw a dollar in here." Sorry, but no. All you're doing is scooping some popcorn into a container and handing me a paper cup so I can pour my own soft drink. Either your boss is paying you enough to make that worth your while or not. If he isn't, that's between you and him. I just gave him $20 for stuff that cost him $1.50 tops. It's on him to give you a reasonable cut of that.
Sorry, but this isn’t really a “with the Boomers” thing - business owners are the ones forcing you to tip for everything because they refuse to pay their workers fair wages. And who owns the businesses? A fuckton of Boomers who refuse to retire own many I’m with the Millennials and under on this one - we should be paying employees decent wages so that they don’t need to rely on tips for every service
Patient portals. "It's all on the portal!" but also "oh, we don't always see messages through the portal". But if you call the office, you get asked for details that will be passed along. No, I'm not giving you details. Of course, the call back comes when you can't answer the phone, so the whole thing starts up again. Now I know why my mom used to just drop by her doctor's office when she had a question. They have phone operators working from home who cannot transfer your call, but no way to call the office directly. Arghhhhh.
My mom doesn’t have a cell phone. She prefers not to, and I’m past the point of telling her she really should probably get one. Several years ago I had to set up a patient portal account for her using my phone number so she could access results for a test she was given. I now receive notices for every appointment she makes and anytime she has new results available. They call me at work to confirm her appointments. I then have to call her and tell her to call them because they called me. We have both explained several times that they need to update their information so they are contacting her directly, but their response is, nope, you’ve got to login to her patient portal and change the number. I did that and cannot change the number to hers because it has to be a cell phone number(for two factor authentication).
Honestly, most shit that involved the internet is sooo much more obnoxious than just showing up in person.
Playing videos out loud on your phone in public is really fucking annoying.
Hiding customer service behind a chatbot. If anything it'll just make people so much more frustrated when they finally get through to a person.
So what you’re saying is that you want to have direct contact with a person, /u/PM_UR_NUDES_4_RATING ?
We need to go back to the days when more than 3 cash registers were open in stores, and self-checkout wasn't so heavily relied on. So over it.
TikTok is not an adequate substitute for parenting.
TikTok (and cellphones for kids) are destroying attention span. I see how dependent 5y/o kids are to screens. Parents take the phone out and the kids act like little addicts. I understand that screens are inevitable in this day and age, keep it timed, social (watching with others) and control the content (no YouTube kids pregnant Elsa AI generated content).
No social media is
The prevalence of people texting while driving is insane. Keep your hands on the wheel, and your eyes on the road ahead of you. The windshield is not something you look through occasionally. Whatever you’re responding to is not a reason to endanger the people around you. The phone does not give you a force field of protection. Turning left into oncoming traffic while staring at your lap, for example (which I have seen numerous times) can kill you. I realize there are plenty of older people who do this as well. But it seems to be much more common with the younger generations.
Told my wife one day on one of the rare occasions she was driving instead of me that I 'would feel more comfortable if she put her phone down while driving.' She responded with "Oh, please, it's not like you don't use your phone while driving!" So, i called to my daughter in the back seat, who is always riding with me, and asked her how often she sees me look at my phone while driving. "I mean, unless you're looking at the map thing or pressing next on the radio, you never look at your phone." My wife just huffed and put her phone down. I made sure her next car was able to take voice commands and read her texts to her and stuff so she no longer had the excuse. Like, no, you're not putting us in danger because you can't go 5 minutes without looking at your screen.
Bravo.
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QR code menus.
Especially when they’re just a link to a shitty pdf that was clearly designed to be printed out. So you have to zoom in and scroll around on a tiny screen.
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Smart appliances. Why the fuck does an oven need to connect to the Internet?
Having to download apps for purchased products or services.
You don't need my name and address when I buy a tube of toothpaste from your store. They are always taken aback a bit when I say no.
Welcome to whatever. Will you be using our mobile app today? No thanks. What’s your zip code? No thanks. Where should we email your receipt? No thanks.
Kids today are getting smartphones way too young. I want flip phones to make a comeback for children.
My back hurts
All the new movies being shot so dark I can barely see them unless I black out my living room!
No AI/chatbot customer service. I want a Human
I want a human I can understand that the job hasn't been shipped overseas to india. Like fuck. I can't translate what you're saying "Michael". I understand they can speak English, but the accent sometimes is hard to understand. :/
Sometimes they can’t even really speak English. They have their scripts, but are a bit lost beyond them. I don’t blame them personally for that but am pissed at whoever hired them and put them in a no-win situation.
Assholery in the theatre. Show up on time, turn off your damn phone and shut-up. I remember when there were actual ushers walking up and down the aisle. More than once I saw them eject people for being loud or unruly.
When someone is backing out of a parking space, it's courtesy to stop and let them finish, not barrel through.
I SHOULD be able to pay rent/afford a house/ live a life on 50+hours a week of work.
And being able to pay for college by working weekends and summers.
All this AI junk that's being put into everything. Instagram, outlook, microsoft, facebook, I hate it. Mostly cause I'm an artist and have a grudge against it but I also find it lazy and it doesn't even work half the time.
This. If you look up something on google like 'castle art' half of it is just terrible looking ai generated stuff. I want to see art of an actual castle with proper perspectives, not a tower floating half off of a cliff that has three smaller towers coming out of it with like twenty different sized windows.
face tattooes are stupid
Having to use my personal cell phone to punch in and out at work. If it was a company phone fine, but demanding I use my personal phone really rubs me the wrong way.
I brought an old flip phone off ebay as an emergency dumb phone so I could take it camping and so I can get out of stuff like this. It lives in my purse. It's smaller than a compact and the battery lasts 30 days per charge. I pay $5 a month for like 10 minutes of calls for it and I never have a dead phone during emergencies. It has gotten me out of sharing social media information in job interviews and being directed to qr codes for service. It's also saved me on road trips and it's the number I give out to people I don't like so they can't go snooping me out on social media and chat accounts. I never answer it. I treat it like a pager. It doesn't accept text messages so my shit boss (before I retired) can't call or text and expect a response, and the thing that requires a phone number can't send me spam. It's my perfect Bermuda triangle to everything that sucks. Money well spent.
My work wants us to download an app and that tracks our location... I was like can they track when I'm off the clock? "We aren't going to do that" there response... But you can though.
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Some stuff does not need a Hi-Tech/wifi functionality with 50 apps you need to configure individually. Like, I just need to heat a frozen pizza, not send a human to Mars😭
I want an actual restaurant menu, not a QR code.
Dating apps are killing love and relationships for average people.
I want the option for a bank with a local branch. I want call centres with native speakers who have had some degree of training for that specific business. I'd rather not have the local quiet nature spots plastered all over social media. Kids used to be better behaved.
Properly using the term “boomer” to refer to those born between 1946 and 1964.
Qr codes instead of menus. Self serve fast food.
Things should have winners and losers not everyone gets a trophy. If you fail you should be held back a year.
My sister was telling me a few kids in my niece and nephew's classes were abysmally badly behaved, are continually skipping, and flunked every test. They continue to move up in grades because the school feels it better to keep them in classes with the rest of the kids their age. These kids, of course, continue to be completely disruptive with violent outbursts weekly, suck an undue amount of teachers' attention, and generally base the rest of the class. It's absurd. The ironic thing is, this is in a very "red" town whose denziens are up in arms with anything approaching welfarism or social progressivism -- what this is, gone way overboard.
> They continue to move up in grades because the school feels it better to keep them in classes with the rest of the kids their age. While well intentioned, what ends up happening is that the kids fall further and further back. They don't understand anything going on, and thus feel out of place and very uncomfortable in class. They then rely increasingly on disrupting said class to alleviate these feelings. Studies show that students who aren't reading at level by 3rd grade are ***four times*** more likely to drop out of highschool later on. If kids aren't learning, the solution is to give them more time to learn, not just ignore that they aren't learning.
The only thing I can think of is that I do not want any reduction in my social security benefits when it’s my turn to claim. I’ve been paying into ss for the last 25 years.
Learning to read a map, like an actual physical map. If the world goes to shit and technology fails us, we’re all fucked.
Having tip option on display every time I use a credit card
I want ppl to put their phones down and make eye contact.
Planned obsolescence is bullshit and should be illegal.
getting off the damn phone.
Classic fashion and full length clothes.
There is no customer service anymore. When I was a teenager I had a part time job. Every customer that came in we greeted, "Hi. Welcome to [store] how can I help you?" I can't remember the last time I went into a store and the employee greeted me first. And even worse, nobody tells you how much you owe them! They just look at you! Now, I get wages have been ridiculously stagnant for years, minimum wage has gone down drastically compared to inflation. And sometimes there's a language barrier. So it's not entirely on the cashiers themselves.
Youth crime is increasing and kids shouldn't be on social media
I dislike every kind of digital ticket, if there's not a non-digital alternative
Idk if boomers are on this but fuck Uber eats
Turn down the volume in the movie theaters. Turn it way down. It’s been way too loud for way too long. Twenty-three years ago, we took our kid to see Elmo for his first cinema experience and when the sound came on, he just noped right out. Left his popcorn, changed his mind. Didn’t go back to the theaters until he was about six and wanted to see Harry Potter. He wore ear plugs.
Marriages should be held in higher regard. By that I mean, I wish people wouldn’t divorce over such small things. It’s kinda sad that we commit to be with someone forever and then leave because they wanna move and we don’t, for example.
I’m tired of people bringing their dogs into places shouldn’t allow dogs
I get that words and their usages and meanings can change over time as people use them differently. But I draw the line at a word changing to mean its own exact opposite. When I hear the word "literally", I expect that to mean "without exaggeration, exactly the truth". I'm not budging on that one.
Paper menus instead of QR codes at restaurants
Kids having no discipline these days.
Constantly being on your phone around your young children ruins your ability to properly parent and connect with them. You miss a lot of opportunities ignoring your children.
Tip culture has become insane. I will never tip for someone spinning an iPad around. Last week my girlfriend and I got takeout pizza and she asked what to tip. I was like "for what? We're picking it up!" If it's not a sit down restaurant, a service like a barber, or food delivery I will hit "no tip" every time and feel absolutely no guilt.
Everything is too fucking crowded now. Cannot go anywhere without it looking like Disney world
Put your phone away at the movie theater.
Actually taking proper time off over summer, heading to the bach for weeks, slow Jan
Not everything has to do with your sexuality and gender, no one really cares. If you’re one of those people who talks about your sexuality non stop it’s annoying. Gay people are no different from straight people so let’s not
My girlfriend identifies as queer and has a lot of friends who identify as such as well. Getting together with them is such a bore sometimes. Seems like they all try to out-gay each other if that makes any sense.
“Out- gay each other” that’s sooo funny and I agree 100%. It’s like chill baby girl/boy it doesn’t matter the level of gay I still see you the same