Topic Tuesday #145 2015/04/28 "Pressure Cooker Satire"

Topic Tuesday #145 2015/04/28 "Pressure Cooker Satire"

I was going to talk about the SCOTUS and the opening arguments in what may end up as the key to full marriage equality for those that are not hetrosexual, but I was so enraged but the dialog and the logical fallacies in use, the worst of which was the slippery slope argument to incest posed by one of the conservative justices... No, I can't address that right now, no matter how much booze is sat in front of me, so rather I have another concept that I want to address before it flees my brainpan. 

Satire.

Satire is a valuable element of free cultures around the world. It has been employed for all of recorded history, and therefore into prehistory. Satire, allows up to poke the bear without the bear tearing us to shreds; to provide commentary without the authority to do so. I value all free speech and satire closely. However, there is an affect that was only brought to my attention today that is disturbing.

Anyone that had cooked or been a student and heard the phrase, will know what letting off some steam means. A pressure cooker is the best example. If the regulator doesn't let off some steam, the cooking vessel will explode like a bomb, releasing all of it at once. If you let that steam off, and keep the heat on, the contents cook quite quickly. 

Satire is that pressure release valve to society. Take what has been happening in the United States around racial violence with the police force. Ferguson and the very recent Baltimore riots come to mind as pressure cookers. 
These "pots" have been on a low flame for a very long time. The populace has been brought to a boil time and again, but could it be that occasional humorous outcries of satire, the pressure was released and they didn't explode earlier?
Could we be so manipulated; sated by the heartfelt and frustrated humor that a comedian can deliver? Could the Daily Show not only deliver news, but as it is delivering it, defuse the bomb of the message?

It is a philosophical question, that may have some scientific merit to it, though I have not found a study on it. If you find one, please bring it to my attention.

Until then, stay reasonable.

Topic Tuesday #106 2014/07/29 "Customer Service"

Topic Tuesday #106 2014/07/29 "Customer Service"

The customer is not always right. The customer, in spite of their obvious shortcomings, is vital to any business, but seldom "right". That is one of those easy to say staff motivationals to get people to try to work with unreasonable persons. Let's be honest with ourselves...

Depending on what I'm shopping for I am a consumer armed in one of three ways.

1) I have more information than anyone should about a product or even an entire market segment.

2) I may have just enough information to be dangerous. Or...

3) I may be an idiot in search of a village.

These three positions are mimicked with astonishing acumen by the damned souls charged with dealing with customers. It is hard to determine what the customer service representative would prefer from the consumer. As the consumer I always prefer an expert on the other end of the exchange. This may be because I am a particular type of consumer. I always want to do things on my own. This makes me the over informed consumer and nearly intolerant of what I will refer to as Level 1 Customer Service. I can only presume that Level 1, hates people such as myself. In my defense, I try to bypass the lower levels whenever possible, but often the gatekeepers have a script with particular metrics and regulations that they MUST follow.

In this type of interaction, the recent kerfuffle with Comcast comes to mind {https://m.soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-service}, the script is terrible. The best thing that you can hope for, is someone that can figure out the best solution for both the customer and the company on heir own. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the customer is not always "right"; but they "know" they are... 

This is highly subjective. The term "right" is always dependent on the point of view. From the perspective of the customer, anything the company they are dealing with does that costs them money or time is bad. As it happens, this is the same view that the corporations hold. Both are at odds from the outset, so if you find a place that treats you well, they have determined something more valuable than that single terse encounter. Repeat business, from happy customers, is good.

Oh and something else, in the information age, bad news really does travel around the world before the truth gets its pants on. Twitter has changed the face of customer service. Some interactions are what you would hope to see. A complaint with a positive response from corporate. However in the case of an airline that was not allowing a priority customer to have his small children board along with him (I thought small children were supposed to board first to get them settled... weird.) and he said how unhappy he was and that he was going to call them out (quite literally the service agent) on Twitter. So, rather than diffuse the situation by just letting the man making a scene get on the plane with his kids which seems like the actual policy, they pulled him off the plane, and demanded he deleted the tweet or have the cops called. Seriously... The airline (Southwest) gave him a $50 travel voucher for the the inconvenience, which will go to waste since he never plans to fly with them again. EVER. Now... he didn't have to vent so publicly, and shame the agent being a douche. Especially since the douche agent may have simply thought they were doing their job before hand and was then confronted with a public relations nightmare that could have had their job ended. This stresses people out! So though deplorably extortionist, I can see the desire to erase the object of their impending doom. But that could have been done by just letting the kids get on the freaking plane. The escalation was uncalled for, on both sides, in my opinion. But... his story is quite convincing. http://abcnews.go.com/US/family-booted-off-southwest-airlines-dad-tweeted-rude/story?id=24685645

Comcast, and many communication companies, seems to have an adverse reaction to actual communication with customers. The phone trees are a nightmare. I, and many others, have needed to call telecommunication providers and avoided it for months - just due to dread and not wanting to spend my entire day on the phone getting progressively more upset. This frustration is exacerbated further by knowing a thing or three about what their jobs entail. Something is wrong.

You have already done the troubleshooting steps.

They want you to go through the script again.

And again.

Oh... and again.  

I have come to the point of just saying all the steps I have done and asking for an escalation immediately upon getting a human on the other end. Sometimes that works, but I am always transferred multiple times. As for the poor saps on the other end...  I am sorry that you have a job that you obviously detest and seems to be sucking your life essence our of your orifices. But... I just wanted to modify my account... I either wanted to get more product from you and/or give you more money... OR... now I just want to terminate my account, and very nearly your/my life.

In the world of customer service... NO ONE is "right", but we are all mostly pissed off.

Topic Tuesday #104 2014/07/15 "Voyeurism: Why We Like To Watch"

Topic Tuesday #104 2014/07/15 "Voyeurism: Why We Like To Watch"

Human beings are natural pattern seeking animals. What does that have to do with the voyeurism? Simple; you have to observe to recognize a pattern. Given the shape and structure of our brains, it can be concluded that humans are very visual creatures. Our eyes being front facing and spaced to give a sense of depth, indicate we are keen on focusing our vision on points of interest. If we go down the "predatory", or conversely "prey", avenues, we can readily draw correlations to the benefits of an evolved observation of a target, to find patterns that are relevant to either attack or escape, or whatever your proclivity may be. 

We are all "wired" in similar ways, but we have a multitude of differences in what drives us. For some people, and I posit all people to a degree, like to watch other people. One of my hobbies is people watching. The best places to people watch are places with a lot of people and highly emotionally charged spaces. Take a theme park; thousands of people, all paying around $100 each to be there, to (in theory) have fun. Funny how people act when they are under pressure (financial, expectations, etc.) to enjoy themselves. The kids do, because it is what they do, until they burn out or are told "NO". Watching the parents is an exercise in human nature. I find it absolutely fascinating. This detached nature of observation, I have found, is shared by many people. In others, it goes beyond the detached. 

Voyeurism, as defined by Hirschfeld, M. (1938). Sexual anomalies and perversions: Physical and psychological development, diagnosis and treatment (new and revised edition), is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions usually considered to be of a private nature.

This first part of the definition from 1938, puts a stigma on what may be a perfectly natural impulse. The last part, is more like the movie Rear Window or my people watching at theme parks. Let me be clear, the desire to watch other people, for whatever reason is not inherently bad or taboo, but if you make peep holes and plant cameras around the object of your desire, you have likely stepped over the line... unless you have a warrant for surveillance.

Today, we all revel in voyeurism. It's the most popular thing on television. Reality TV is nothing more than voyeurism. Shows like Survivor, The Real World, Survivor Man, and so on, though produced and often scripted, fill the need in our brains to analyze what pattern the participants will reveal. Did the one you thought demonstrated the best overall fitness gain immunity or get voted off the island? If you picked a side, you were participating in the spectacle, investing brain power to finding the winner.

Voyeurism is a primal and vital part of what we are. Some have it a little reversed and enjoy being watched, opposed to being the watcher. The exhibitionist is the natural subject to the voyeur. It's a fascinating relationship that we have with each other, and thankfully, as long as you do not break anyone's personal privacy rights, everyone can explore their proclivities with impunity. 

Small factoid for you to take away, "Scopophobia" is a fear of being stared at. Not very good if you have a career on stage or screen.