Things that worked better in the old days

[blondeseaside]

Just been for a drive thru Mcdonalds. In the good old days, the whole menu would be hanging above the car on a metal sign. What do we have now? One big screen that just shows a couple of menu "highlights", so it only showed one wrap, one burger....so yeah, we get that you do burgers and wraps, but which ones? Where is the full menu? There are 16 burger types at Mcdonalds, but only 1 burger was on the screen. There are 4 wrap types, but only the Tikka one was on the screen (so I ordered that). How on earth are you meant to know what you want to order, if they only show a fraction of the menu? I asked Gemini and she said you're meant to look at the menu on your phone now....but I am driving!

First world problem, but it did my head in!

As per PP, also with Andrews and Arnold for internet. Also don't work for them. Had such an appalling experience with Virgin that i specifically looked for someone who wouldn't enrage me when I required a very, very basic level of service (that I was paying for!). Now paying only slightly less but feel far richer as it's tiring being furious!

Oh, indeed! Any company or organisation that keeps you waiting when you call them, with the excuse that "we are experiencing higher call volumes than usual" will be included.

If they don't want to be subject to it, their only alternative is to be compelled to announce "Your call is NOT important to us, and neither are you - we'll answer your call whenever our money-saving permanent skeleton staff finally get to you".

OR - and this one is radical - they could also avoid either of these sanctions actually employing enough (properly trained) staff to answer the volume of calls promptly and then go on to resolve the customers' queries, rather than fobbing them off!

What the fuck happened to a good old timetable; a nice simple grid showing all the sessions at different times and days. Oh no, it's now pages of lists niche session by niche session or worse, lane by lane.

Oh to just rock up at the swimming pool, pay a couple of quid for a "general swim" with a bit roped off to pound a lane if you wished, and stay in as long as you had the energy/ until you turned into a prune.

Now it's download the app, scroll through lists, double check your swimming speed per length on Garmin, book lane B for a 45-60 min window and the changing rooms and lanes are busy because everyone is herded in and out of the same slot, not trickling through when it suits them.

I miss the old seasonal booklets of what sessions the leisure centre had so you could process the big picture in one go.

Going into town...

Old style, drive into town, park in the multi-storey on my side of town, go to the shops, browse and buy stuff (including impluse purchases), go home.

2026, nearest multi-storey shut down. Road connecting it to the rest of town is buses only policed by poor signage and cashcow ANPR cameras (so basically a dead end to nowhere). This means an extra 15 mins trawling around the ring road through congestion and umpteen junctions to the big labythinine carpark. Once in town go to the couple of shops you need that still exist. Hopefully what you need is actually in stock. If clothing, hope it is cut to fit a human body, and half-decent quality. Dodge the druggies/ drunks/ beggars liberally scattered along the high street. Go home and remember why you hadn't done it for a few months.

TBH if I really need something and it's not heavy/ bulky, I tend to park in a free car park a mile away and have a pleasant walk. The 15 minutes that takes is nicer than the extra driving/ carpark time which is about the same time.

I would prefer to buy things in person, but it's not made easy or pleasant to do so!

YYY to buying gig tickets!

Also train tickets.

@WilliamTopazMcGonagallPoorPoetFromDundeeBeItTold

OR - and this one is radical - they could also avoid either of these sanctions actually employing enough (properly trained) staff to answer the volume of calls promptly and then go on to resolve the customers' queries, rather than fobbing them off!

Yes! I deal with HMRC daily. The vast majority of phone calls they get will be repeat calls because earlier ones weren’t dealt with properly so people have to phone again and again to get even simple things resolved.

Likewise with the NHS, my DH is constantly phoning the gp surgery or hospital and getting the runaround because no one knows what they’re doing - he’d had cancer for 8 years with not only chemo side effects but the cancer is causing other things such as brittle bones, so he has to liaise with different departments, none of whom are capable of talking directly with eachother, so it’s up to him to navigate the utter nonsense meaning it takes several phone calls to get even the simplest of things organised such as appointments and scans as people never phone him back, give him numbers of random wrong people etc.

So a huge agree with training staff to do their jobs rather than their default fob off position.

In the past there were no call centres. An organisation employed their own staff to handle queries. And if you needed to you could raise the query further up to a supervisor. You could speak to the same person who knew why you were calling.

Department stores that sold carpets, furniture etc employed their own staff. They did not subcontract to third parties. You also only paid a deposit. Not in full upfront as some want these days. If anything went wrong ( and it usually didn’t as most people cared about keeping their job), you could get things sorted out instead of being passed around. The furniture was in stock and did not arrive from China.

Like so many things in life, the idea of call centres was initially sold as a massive benefit to customers. You would have a large pool of trained, dedicated people who could assist and resolve your query - and rather than having to depend on or wait for a specific individual, the very next person who became available would be right there for you in no time at all.

Then the people who ran them got greedy, and forgot that they were meant to be there to provide quality service to their customers/the public, rather than an obligatory thing that you had to at least nominally provide - designed to fob people off and stop them bothering you when you only want their money and not them.

In olden days I worked near a John Lewis. We lived in a furnished flat...but I knew that if I had loads of money I would buy all my furniture and things in there and it would be wonderful.
Im always sad to read that their service is now woeful.

In my gym it's not even the same timetable week by week.

My previous gym was actual bliss - apart from the odd aquazumba, you could just rock up at any time and swim. A fast lane, but otherwise just a big old pool that seldom had more than five or six people doing their 30-90m.

And every so often it was entirely empty.

But then the roof fell in and the whole thing shut down.

I've given up on HMRC. I told them I'd made a mistake (by over-contributing to my SIPP) but they insisted I hadn't. The rules are very clear, but they didn't understand. I ended up writing to them and my pension provider with instructions for how I was reversing the payment and giving HMRC their tax relief back.

I also hate my phone full of apps , using up my screens . Especially if it's a one off app that I won't use again . And what if you lose your phone or it's stolen . What a pain.

These days I need process note to FIND the actual process notes. It's wasting all of our time.

Give me a folder with paper instructions that I can tweak as necessary. They took seconds to find the information.

Yup. Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise had local offices where you could go and have a chat or call on the phone, always the same people. A person/team was also allocated to each major employer, so the same person/team would be handling all the employees of local big employers so there'd be continuity and the tax office staff would "know" the employer. As an accountant, we could just pick up the phone and speak to whichever tax inspector we thought was most appropriate for the case/query we were dealing with - we knew what each of them specialised in (and which were more lenient/helpful!!). Nowadays, calls and correspondence are just randomly allocated to contact centre workers all over the country who have no "local" knowledge and it just makes everything harder. Add in the amalgamations of the different tax authorities into HMRC and it all just turned into one big mess. No wonder the official "tax gap" is tens of billions each year consisting of mistakes, black economy tax fraud, etc. Virtually none of the efficiency/improvements promised with the amalgamations of IR and HMCE nor the centralisation of tax offices have come to fruition.

And yes to shops, carpet stores, furniture stores, etc., all just "fronts" these days where you get your carpet fitted by a random subbie and furniture comes on the same van from the same warehouse as other furniture stores!

Same with insurance - lots of "fronts" on the comparison websites, but there's only a handful of "background" insurance firms so when you change from Mabel's Wheels to Prestigious, it's still administered and backed by the same background insurance firm!

Creeping into professional services now, i.e. accountants, solicitors, opticians, dentists, etc., where big chains are buying up small independents but instead of changing branding, they're keeping the original names/logos/brands to try to con the clients/customers into thinking they're dealing with private/independent firms.

We need to stop using Call Centres in foreign countries. I was doing something really complicated recently and needed help. The Call Centre "helper" had such a strong accent that I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying. So frustrating!

In the good old days, we went to the Wimpy, sat down and had our burger and chips on a plate and ate them with knife and fork. We didn't eat them in the car and then throw the packaging out of the window because we didn't want litter in our cars. that worked better for the environment.

In the good old days only the top tier of academic students went to university. And there was a thing called loans that were taxpayer funded.
No debts. Not everyone going.
Everyone else went to work. Or had an apprenticeship. And employers were bothered about training the next generation up.

Unfortunately, the same happens with UK call centres, and even in person in places like hospitals. And I'm not just meaning "foreigners", but also strong regional accents such as Scottish, Liverpudlian, etc., can all cause communication difficulties.

Life. Just that really. 🥺

@Monty36 I suppose it massages unemployment figures. But the dumbing down is ridiculous. And so often the provision and standards at even a good university are crap.

And all these student residences! It seems there’s a business model based on a never-ending supply of Chinese students. I live near three “universities” . They seem overwhelmingly populated by Chinese students. What happens if they all decide to head elsewhere I do not know.

@Monty36

And employers were bothered about training the next generation up.

I think many still are but are thwarted by the cost of employments, red tape, bureaucracy, risk etc.

Among my client base are lots of "sole traders", i.e. garage mechanic, electricians, plumbers, decorators, joiners, alarm installers, etc., who all basically say the same that they'd like to take on a youngster to train, but are put off at first base when they start to look into it, start talking to the local college, etc. None have bothered taking it further.

I'm an accountant and I feel exactly the same, even though I know enough about payroll, employment law, etc., I just don't have the time nor inclination of dealing with the local college apprenticeship scheme which seems like an absolute minefield of documents required, policies, etc, and the training costs (course fees) for training adults is exorbitant (literally thousands of pounds). As a result, I'm winding down my practice over a few years instead of passing it on - it's served me well for 25 years and is ripe for someone young and ambitious to take it over and grow/develop it, but I can't afford to train such a person and can't afford to pay a qualified accountant for a "changeover period".

We need something like the old YTS/JTS schemes again, along with bringing back affordable adult education options, and we need a massive relaxation of employment laws/rights for trainees/young people so potential employers aren't frightened of being sued for unfair dismissal etc when they need to get rid of someone who isn't up to the job, without having to go down lengthy formal dismissal processes which cost time and money.

The foreign students are part of successive governments plans to get money into the country to offset the enormous amounts we pay out for goods and services from foreign firms. Likewise, the student accommodation blocks are often financed with foreign money, again, to bring money into the UK. Otherwise we'd have an ever bigger balance of trade deficit which would bugger the economy further. It's why successive governments are content to let foreign millionaires/billionaires buy up properties and leave them empty for years as investments - it brings money into the UK. Like you, I really fear for when foreign investment dries up.

Shops. Having to do an exit interview every time you buy something - 'can we have your email to send you a receipt, how would you rate this product or service, please take five minutes to give us a review...'. Those five minutes are taken from me to provide a service to them!

And these days - I know it's a lot better for the environment - but you have to pay for a bag - which has their name on it - so now you're basically paying them for you to advertise them...

All of the above. I'm particularly frustrated with the constant ask for feedback - we moved house last month and I'm being bombarded with questionnaires or requests to "drop us a review". Also KPIs at work, which means everything we do is measured and analysed, instead of just being left to do what I'm really good at and have done for the last 20 years. I can't think of any progress that's improved my life recently.

This.

I got shouted at by a guy because I could barely understand him.
He told me how to supposedly fix my problem about 4 times it didn't work and he said "My God. That is what I am telling you" very aggressively.

I reported him, not that Sky probably care.