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"Computer says 'Naaaaao.'"

  
 
Disco is My Class War
05:47 / 13.04.06
Okay, so we may not like Little Britain, but how many times hav you had some stupid experience with a bureaucracy where the computer has said no? I nominate this thread as a place for people to offload their tales of annoying, frustrating, bureaucratic hell. I shall kick off with this gem of an anecdote:

So yesterday, I needed to call the local Gay and Lesbian Referral/Counselling Service to get a referral for something that shall remain nameless, let's call it a sexual health thing. I introduced myself to the person on the other end, and said, "I'm a trans-identified guy and I'm looking for a counsellor specialising in blah blah." "Okay," he said. "I just need to ask you a couple of questions for our statistics." "Sure," I said.
"What's your sexual orientation?"
"Queer."
"Oh. You identify as a male?"
"Yes."
"And are you in a relationship?"
"Yes. With a woman."
[Sounding befuddled] "So, what's your sexual orientation?"
"Queer."
"Would that be.... bisexual?"
"No. I'm queer. See, I don't believe in two genders, so bisexual isn't for me." (I'm getting hostile by now.)
"Oh." [Silence for a moment.]
Then I said, "Look I'm calling because I have a queer history, and most of the mainstream services for this assume heterosexuality, and children, and bio gender, and I thought you might be able to find me a counsellor specialising in this area who is trans-friendly."
"Oh. Okay. Just let me look up the computer."
He didn't say anything for about five minutes and finally he said, "The computer isn't working. It doesn't have what you're looking for."
He hadn't asked me anything at all about why I was calling, by this stage, hadn't said, "Tell me about your situation," nothing. He said he was looking at the paper printout, and finally he said, "Aha, I have something. The Centre Against Sexual Assault. I'll give you the number, 9485...."
"But this isn't about sexual assault," I said. "This is about sexual health. I didn't say anything about sexual assault when I introduced myself."
"Oh. No, you didn't."

Finally, after 20 minutes on the phone, he had not given me a single phone number or name, or asked anything about why I needed to know this information. I was just flabbergasted. He was apologetic about it, but basically, he was NO HELP at all. It wasn't a particularly weird query. I think the fact that I was trans just flummoxed him. And obviously, don't ever tell anyone in a bureaucracy that you identify as 'queer' cuz they just won't get it.

This episode actually beats the time I went for my driver's licence and they told me I couldn't have a licence because I'm trans but hadn't had gender reassignment surgery.
 
 
*
08:07 / 13.04.06
rrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRARGH.
 
 
Quantum
08:17 / 13.04.06
woops, id's finally Hulked/She-hulked/Ze-Hulked out... WHY WON'T PUNY BEAURACRATS LEAVE HULK ALONE!?
 
 
Quantum
08:32 / 13.04.06
Oh, and nightmare-wise I used to work in the Jobcentre and have witnessed idiocy you could not possibly imagine.

My advice as an ex-bureaucrat to all those having a difficult time with someone driving a computer badly is
a) phone back another time
b) speak to someone senior by complaining
c) ask them their name again and exactly where they work

The best result is to speak to someone else, it's usually only one or two INCOMPETENT IRRITATING FOOLS that give all the staff a bad name. If you can get to a competent staff member they usually sort you out within a few minutes. c) is the threat of culpability, which will motivate the dronesheeplehumatonsleeperidiot to help you out of fear of retribution.
 
 
Sniv
08:42 / 13.04.06
As a current desk-jockey, I'd like to add that when we're fucking everything up and having a hard time helping someone, we know it's going badly. By adding pressure or threatening to complain to the boss, all you'd be doing is making the bureaucrat nervous and more prone to making mistakes or becoming kerfuddled (something that happens to me a lot). The best advice is to call back later, or suggest putting your request in writing in an e-mail perhaps - I find it much easier to deal with a problem if I can just take 15 seconds, pressure free, to just think about the problem. With an impatient customer on the phone, there's no time for this, and it is frustrating, and can lead to mistakes.

BTW, Mr Disco, while I sypathise, I also feel a bit sorry for the guy on the phone - I mean, fluid-gendered alternative sexualities are a bit hard to tie down to a check-box, aren't they? If anything, you should be annoyed at the computer system he was using, not the fact that he was having trouble and trying to help.

And, as a bureaucrat, there is nothing more frustrating that the computer-system saying 'no'. Fucking work, goddammit!!!! *ahem* Roll on long weekend...
 
 
Char Aina
08:56 / 13.04.06
he needed to think outside the box.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
08:59 / 13.04.06
Yes, to be fair isn't "queer" inevitably going to (isn't it intended to?) subvert and resist the kind of categorisation around which a computer form designed for widespread bureaucratic use is going to be based?

I sympathise with your frustration of course, but I would suggest that maybe "queer" by nature can't fit in a box.

The issue would perhaps then be, from your point of view, that the guy should have stopped referring to boxes and forms, and talked to you as an individual.
 
 
Char Aina
09:01 / 13.04.06
well, quite.
why cant people talk about things in their role as people as well as in their role as data entry goon?
human error, i reckon.
 
 
Quantum
09:05 / 13.04.06
Try using the hi-tech 1985 Jobcentre computer system to untangle someone else's error in order to get a cheque to someone so they can feed their son, while navigating the Byzantine complexity of the benefits system paperwork and simultaneously quelling the person's murderous rage at having their entire income stopped for no reason by an incompetent bureaucrat. Fun.
John, I know what you mean, but just saying 'hang on...' will usually buy that time. If the computer system is the problem (GAH!) I would usually apologise and explain what was happening and offer to phone someone back when I'd sorted it out.
What I hate is those people who sit in stubborn silence with the look of a startled deer in their eyes when you ask them simple questions, and then turn to the PC like it's a shield and go 'erm- no it's not coming up.' and return to 'Vacant' mode. Well?! Now what? Where do I go next? WTF? Maybe I'll go and unleash the frustration you've given me on the next innocent person I speak to, ooh there's John the exploding boy that'll do...
 
 
Mistoffelees
09:48 / 13.04.06
When I was still working at my local town hall, my computer (as well as all the computers of my colleagues) fucked up all the time.

You want to print out a cheque, you´ll have to print it three times (one for the client, one for you, one for the man who hands out the money) along with another two prints for protocols. So five prints a cheque, ca 20 cheques in four hours. Again and again, cheques from other colleagues down the hall came out of your printer and vice versa. Or the printer started eating the paper. So you went to the photocopier, but all the copying made him go bust and my colleague started kicking the poor machine.

All the while the computer would give up and stop working for the entire department. Then it would go from bad to worse. Colleagues and clients would be really stressed out, lots of shouting while you had to write those cheques and other stuff (if a family with five children wanted to go to the doctor/dentist in the next three months it meant writing 14 bills they could show their doctor, because the computer was not able to print them). If you wrote even one letter on those cheques wrong, the client came back and you had to rewrite the whole thing.

I can´t watch 2001 anymore, because HAL makes me think of computers causing trouble at work.

Then came the big time reform. The government paid oodles of hundreds of millions for a new software. Officially, you got a three day course where you learned to use the program.
Reality: a colleague sat down next to me and tried explaining the program to me. He had 70 minutes for that. In that time we couldn´t even use the program. After it had crashed for the fourteenth time, I gave up counting.

I don´t do that work anymore (YES!), but I hear from my former colleagues and I read in the news, that it´s a catastrophe. The only goal of the reform was cutting costs, but it backfired big time, and now the government pays billions more than before. One recent fuck up of the program: it mistakingly transferred 40 million € to the health insurances, and noone could do anything about it!
 
 
Spaniel
09:50 / 13.04.06
John, I'm not sure Q was suggesting that the customer complain to the boss, rather that they ask to speak to the boss in order to get their business sorted if the guy at the end of the phone is failing, for whatever reason, to sort it. There is a distinction albeit a subtle one. A distinction that you, as the customer, can, and often should, draw the manager's attention to.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:17 / 13.04.06
John: In this case, I think, the issue is that this was a Gay and Lesbian switchboard - that is, one of fairly few areas where you might expect to be treated with consideration of your trans/queer status. So, if you were trying to get car insurance it might be more understandable if there were fewer boxes to tick on the "sexual orientation" questionnaire. Also, this collection of statistics was not germaine to Mister Disco's inquiry - it was not a request for information in order to provide support, but a request for info to fill out their statistics.

Having said which, the guy on thhe other end of the phone was probably a volunteer, which is perhaps part of the problem - voluntary organisations are disadvantaged by not haivng the ability to remunerate their workers, so often have to balance providing enough numbers to cover all inquiries with providing only able service. Although in practical terms there are quite simply not enough people with customer service and PC skills to offer guaranteed satisfaction in any area, voluntary or otherwise...
 
 
Mourne Kransky
10:47 / 13.04.06
Yes, queer might not be one of the choices he has to make on his tick box form. And filling out those statistics will serve a purpose - it will help to judge the demand for services - and perhaps is necessary to locate the funding. All the more reason then to make sure his information is accurate.

If the choices you're giving people don't capture the correct information, those statistics will be useless. He needs a further box where he can enter "neither of those choices" and indicate the choice made in another way. Then the next generation of his form can include that option too.

However, sounds like he was courteous and just unable to help. That's a mercy. I've had a few shouting matches with people who were very frustrated by my reluctance to let them put me in one of their boxes.

I've also worked for Lesbian and Gay Helplines, btw, where people might phone up wanting the moon on a stick but that doesn't sound like the case with Mr Disco.

Reminds me too of a documentary I heard on Radio 4 once where people who've spent their lives ticking "Other" on ethnic monitoring forms described the long term detrimental effects of that.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
11:49 / 13.04.06
Oh, the guy was almost certainly a volunteer. He was really apologetic and nice about his lack of help, and suggested that I call back later. I did assume that saying 'queer' wouldn't throw anyone for a loop. But it also seems quite counter-intuitive to take down stats at the start of a call, rather than at the end, when the person has gotten what they needed. If I was, say, a confused suicidal teenager needing to chat to someone about my desires to fuck people of the same sex, or my parents' threats to kick me out of home for same, I wouldn't be mad keen on telling someone my sexual orientation first up.

The end result is, yet another opportunity for the trans activist kids I work with to approach this organisation and offer to give them some free training in dealing with trans clients. It is a bit discouraging, though.
 
 
Quantum
12:08 / 13.04.06
But the end result makes the next person's life easier, and everyone after that. Go Disco! Don't be discouraged you are a l33t trailblazer from the future trapped in a primitive culture! Go your activist mates too, useful youthful enthusiasm for once instead of smashing teh system with Neo madskillz.
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
16:53 / 13.04.06
Disco, did you end up getting the help you needed from another source?

The couple GLBT organizations I've gotten involved with/known people involved with seemed to mostly have a problem of not having all the information in one place, certainly not organized anyway? Pamphlets shuffled around the offices, no one quite sure where anything was...a central resource would you know, make sense or something. They did manage to recognize "queer," though, and I think it would have been a coup if they didn't. I don't quite understand what's so difficult of having a big database that can be searched for various keywords - like, say "trans" - to find out which health professionals they have listed specialize in the problem at hand.

Are there organizations around designed to train people in volunteering and phone conversation problem solving?
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
17:46 / 13.04.06
WRT Quantum's advice upthread about dealing with bureaucrats: As a longstanding and current one of these (albeit telephone-bound and not "customer facing"), I do sometimes feel like some kind of anti-matter heretic in my teeth-gritting, humourless determination to be open, honest and helpful to customers.

Take the matter of giving names. I always, without exception, give my name at the start of a call and when asked, give out my first and last name and the particular office and section where I work. Many of my co-workers past and present seem to think they will be subject to a pitchfork attack in a darkened alley if they admit to having a surname. In eight years' desk-jockeying across five different jobs I've never suffered negative consequences from telling even the angriest customer who I was, where I worked and precisely what I could and couldn't do to help them.

My personal bugbear is staff who seem to think that because a particular task falls outside their remit, or they just don't know what to do, they're being helpful by telling the customer which other department to call. NO! We are one organization! Unless you intend to give up a portion of your wage to the poor sap on the end of the line, you deal with it and make sure it stays dealt with. For otherwise you are a listless jobsworth condemning everyone else to the hell of your own creation.

Thank you. I shall now descend from my high horse.
 
 
Baz Auckland
23:05 / 13.04.06
The best bureaucratic nightmare I've seen is when my wife, tried to get a Polish passport.

It involved visiting a dozen offices, waiting in lines, taking numbers, getting various letters of proof of citizenship, having to go the district where she last lived (when she was 8 years old) proving she lived there, visiting a few more offices, trying to convince relatives to register her as a resident (which most wouldn't as it would add to their property tax), and finally get told by the Woman in Charge:

'No. You have to apply for your Polish Passport in Canada. Never mind that you're Polish, living in Poland, and working in Poland. You have to go back to Canada to get it.' ...and since she was The Woman in Charge, and all paths led to her, there was nothing to do.

The total time for all of this was about 2 months of running around. Blech.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
04:09 / 14.04.06
Canada. Of course!
 
 
Quantum
09:51 / 14.04.06
You should have gone to Fat Lee.
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
11:26 / 14.04.06
Reading my earlier post I realize I've given the impression that I see myself as some kind of counter-bureaucratic white knight. Of course, it's not the strict truth, and I can be as petty and hidebound as anyone. The only thing I can say in my defence is that most of the work I've done is private sector stuff where my customers (a) in theory have the choice not to use the company's services and (b) aren't depending on me to dish out some life-saving document or benefit that our systems can't or won't issue.

The words guaranteed to make one's heart sink during an adverse conversation - especially when they come right at the opening - are: "I want to speak a manager." Many of us may have had the experience of working in organizations where the people nominally in charge had far less practical knowledge, competence and fluency than those below them, but nonetheless who were the only ones able to dole out that magical benediction that is a manager's opinion. I was recently rid of a manager who was competent enough under usual circumstances, but instantly turned into a stroppy, ignorant work-experience teenager when asked to field a difficult or complex telephone complaint. Everyone on the team dreaded these occasions because her already limited workplace knowledge and ability to think on her feet dropped through the floor the moment a customer raised his or her voice.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
14:09 / 14.04.06
See, I've worked in customer service, and in market research, and I am very happy to hand narky folks on to managers. That's why they're there: they have more power than you, and therefore, they can speak with irate people on their wavelength. With market research I never really care about the 'customer', though. It's not really the same as a helpline. And with ordinary customer service, the main thing is to be friendly, listen and show that you're listening by offering an appropriate response. Not that hard, even if you don't know exactly what the person needs.
 
 
Cat Chant
14:58 / 14.04.06
Not quite as emotive as Disco's (Disco, omgwtf and [hugs]), but the last time I booked long-distance train tickets with thetrainline (Virgin Train's online booking service), they booked us onto a train which had, in fact, been cancelled some weeks before I made the booking. I didn't find this out until we stumbled into Leeds train station on a Sunday morning expecting to fall onto a train for the four-and-a-half-hour trip, and found out Virgin had cancelled the direct service the previous month.
 
  
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