To bloody hate the admin of life

I hear you. Currently coming out of 3rd major plumbing/heating disaster of the year, all unrelated and this one requiring a new boiler (6K) Only lucky in having an excellent and trusted company to undertake (on speed dial ATM) Trying to get the insurance claim sorted for the last one has made me cry and I don't usually.

I'm also recovering from sepsis and having cardiac tests next week and just wish there was someone else to do it all, but there isn't. DH has been bedbound for 3 years now.

Sorry about the pityparty/vent!😂

ETA the plumbers/heating engineers are more like personal friends now, given how much time they've spent here.

Same with Scotrail. Sent off paper forms and tickets mid August. Phoned to be told it could take 4 to 6 weeks. Phoned again yesterday. Guy could find no evidence of our applications then I was conveniently cut off and no attempt made to contact me despite having my phone number and email.

Why offer this service if you've no intention of honouring it?

Just more time wasted.

Totally agree with PP.

Anything that says it's for customer convenience is a huge red flag. There's nothing convenient about downloading an app, signing up for yet another login , using a maddening online chatbot etc etc etc.
Make it stop!

Don’t get me started on trying to obtain compensation from South West Trains for delay of over 30 minutes. You answer lots of questions online but reach a point where the arrow to take you to the final most important page doesn’t work . You go back and do it all again. Same issue. You give up = no compensation claimed.

I feel you. I put my son's nursery money across to the Childcare Choices account the other day in order to receive the government top up. It took 2 days for them to add the funds, they finally went in last night and the bill is due on the last working day of the month.
Low and behold, they ask me for not one, not two, but THREE additional security questions. Just randomised apparently, it's not like I'd forgotten my NINE digit login code or password. Presumably, I must have capitalised/not capitalised the wrong letter, or written 'Bristol University' instead of 'University of Bristol'or whatever, as I was locked out.

So, over £500 of our money is now stuck, nursery still not paid, phone lines of course now closed on weekends. And to top it off, I understand that in order to unlock this shitshow, I have to find the time out of my full time job to print copies of documents, send them to dr/solicitor/teacher friends to sign off, and then send on to HMRC. I mean..... wtf?

For an account I can only pay in to, not withdraw directly from. So yes totally agree with PPs that a lot of these things are designed to put people of using resources they're entitled to.

Totally sympathise - finding & then getting reliable plumbers, builders, handymen is a nightmare in itself before then being at their whim of whether they’ll actually show up, or leave early, or string the job out, when you don’t have the time or energy to deal with it - it’s no wonder it’s easier to just put up with stuff. It boggles me how people work like this but then when they’re their own business & can pick & choose what jobs they want to do, it’s no surprise I guess. I hate it tho too.

I agree I find everything easier using my phone.

My NHS app used to accept a fingerprint on my phone to let me in. Now I have to manually dab and click the screen to add a username and then click and then repeat with a password and a click.
OMG it's so tedious.
I love technology but when things change for the worse it's annoying.

The car park outside the Barnados charity shop now requires a car reg to be put in and the green button to be pressed to eject a ticket to go in the window. I imagine they will have caught loads of people out. At least I don't need to register an APP for that yet.

For passwords, I recommend Bitwarden. For decent tradesmen, try Checkatrade, they seem to be really good.

One thing at a time. The boiler takes priority, especially as we're entering winter.

For the gadget side of things, I believe it is planned obsolescence which is all part of the throwaway society we live in. It's no longer make do and mend because that's far too expensive now.

Most young people don’t carry a wallet or cash anymore. I find it odd , you need a back up ‘ just in case ‘

I was talking to a you g colleague who only uses Apple Pay and doesn’t have a wallet - I asked what happens if he is out and the phone dies or something and he said ‘I’m screwed’. He was very accepting of the fact but I find the idea very stressful!!!

And now they want us to have all our valuable ID information on our phones....Everything on one device. Convenient for some maybe but equally a massive risk and a huge goddamn headache when that one device goes tits up.

My 2 year old phone has just randomly started switching itself off and taking ages to reboot. I can see one day it just won't turn on again. What happens then?!!

I have found a bit of a halfway solution. I was inspired by the book called ‘what they don’t teach you about money’ by Claer Barrett. Which as a side note, if you haven’t read you should buy.

The book is about money. But one of the principles is once a week you dedicate a set 30 to 40 minutes of your life and sort financial things.

So once a week I dedicate half an hour, Tuesday coffee time at 11, where I do these pointless admin jobs. I don’t let them take time out of my day unless urgent.

I know this won’t help for everything, but if you see a message come up n on a Sunday, you just highlight it and think I’ll deal with that on my Tuesday admin half an hour. It really does help.

however, you are entirely right re: overwhelm. Our school has different apps and constant updates. My mum just used to turn up at the gate and parents evening. I’ve started telling people that I’m going ‘off grid’. They might think I’m a bit mad, but I’m prioritising my sanity!

It is hard to get anyone in the ‘ trades’ unless it’s a friend or relative. I look on Facebook for recommendations and that’s how I found a local plumber and someone to do the bath mastic for us.
The rest can be a minefield for the much bigger jobs you want doing. Many builders where I live jusy seem to do up old homes to sell on. Not too interested in the little jobs you may want doing.

I had a similar experience at a London Premier inn. Normally they're great but this one was awful. Any query or request was greeted with eye rolling from the receptionist and the print your own key card did work. She was by now dealing with a man who was insisting he got all his 8 rooms together so I had to wait half an hour. Beyond ridiculous.

I don't get on with any voice recognition stuff as if doesn't recognise my accent. If I try to say "four" which has the r sound at the end, no joy. I end up shouting "faw" in an exaggerated English accent.

I said to ds2 following on from my hotel ‘ experience’ how do people get these jobs? This person wasn’t receptionist material , had zero people skills and obviously didn’t want to deal with anything or anyone yet someone thought he’d be a good match for a major hotel chain to deal with people !
I know it’s not always an easy job, but just a smile or an apology goes a long way sometimes.

Sounds like a dodgy hotel

I have been surprised there have not been far more threads about this.

I so agree.

Sorry to derail as not admin , but our experience with a chain hotel in a UK city this week was beyond awful.
Can’t get in till 3pm, rock up around 10 past to find an empty reception area and both check in machines out of action. After buzzing for five minutes, a surly young man finally appears and is monotone throughout.
Finally, after finishing writing an essay online ( because what he was actually doing I’m not too sure ) we got our keys, hurrah.
Get to our room and it’s not been cleaned or even remotely ready to get into.
Back to see surly man , who doesn’t even say sorry or apologize, but again taps away for ages head buried on his PC. An alarm goes off, he ignores it so do we. More people join our queue giving us and him draggers because he is the only one who can ‘ help ‘ whilst the alarm gets louder. If it was a fire alarm , we’d have been burnt to a crisp by now.
We get another room, eventually, but that only has one towel and there are two of us. I have to track down housekeeping , a poor woman who looks shattered and also couldnt understand why I needed another towel, but she finally realized I wasn’t going without one and she found me one.
Was woken up by a huge row downstairs around 11pm and lots of noise outside where I witnessed an efficient drug deal taking place with people on bikes.
The nearest car park is a bit of a walk away , but the back door that usually leads to the hotel is locked so an even longer walk.
Had the obligatory’ customer satisfaction’ email a few days later , was your welcome a warm one? Made me laugh at least ! No stars from me after all that , but the actual room / shower etc wasn’t too bad tbf.

This is why I never want an electric car and will keep my petrol car as long as possible. If something doesn’t work it’s not a highly complicated electronic problem.

I hear you OP. I get ‘app rage’ the minute someone tells me I need to download an app for something simple. Or if I need to create a password to make a restaurant booking. WTAH.

I think there is a presumption nowadays that everyone WFH and is therefore available during the day. In reality, many people still work out of the home and I’m sure those WFH are not able to available all the time either.
I remember being a full time teacher living by myself and not being able to get my heating fixed as I couldn’t answer calls during the day and couldn’t be at home. In the end I had to pay extra for an out of hours plumber.

Oh yes I relate to this!

GP - no chance! Appointment are as rare as hens teeth. Please be respectful to staff rudeness will not be tolerated but gracefully accept that the staff can be as rude as they like to you. Take it on the chin accept that you are a nuisance and your ailments are imaginary.

Chat Bot - lists every problem apart from the one you need help with but at least it wishes you a good day.

Prove you are not a robot at least 6 times a day.. you never know! You can’t be too careful.

Spend longer paying to park the car than it actually takes to do the shopping.

Sorry your password isn’t recognised. Click here to reset and we won’t send you a link for 20mins just to piss you off. When we do we will say you have already used that password.

Tick all the boxes containing a traffic light. Ooops no try again. Tick all the boxes containing a bicycle. Ah got you!! We knew you were a secret robot.

Anyone who says - we will ring you back tomorrow. They are lying they won’t .

Thank you for holding, your call is important - it’s not but our tea break is.

Trades - I will call in and have a look on my way home. They won’t they will head straight to the pub.

Make sure you recycle everything but not without an appointment first. Your council is dealing with unprecedented amounts of fly tipping but can’t for the life of them work out why.

If you have a small job like a leaky gutter or a malfunctioning washing machine accept that the job is too small and no one can be bothered to come out unless you are willing to take out a second mortgage and make it worth their while. Thankfully YouTube has revolutionised life and you can now find a friendly person willing to talk you through fixing it yourself. My washing machine has been saved 3 times thanks YouTube.

Its called progress 🤩

It I say ‘ S’ to a bot thing on the phones it always says ‘ I don’t know that ‘.’ My voice is my key ‘ or something for the bank , however they can never recognize my voice. It’s enough to make you lose the will to carry on at times

I have been known to scream “SOMETHING ELSE!” at the automated voice after what seems like the 50th “So I can get you to the right place, listen to these options”. I just want to speak to a human, ffs.