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!

Lazy jobsworths are a real problem. Don’t they understand they’re doing themselves out of their job by insisting you go online instead of just booking you in? They can do it when they want to.

Like gp receptionists, DH had it yesterday trying to get a gp appointment as instructed by his oncologist but the receptionist told him she couldn’t book him into triage as he had to complete the online form. So he tried but it timed out before he could press send as he has a broken arm and was slow to type. He tried it twice, and of course,, his previous entries hadn’t been retained, but he couldn’t do it, so phoned back and after lots of huffing and puffing, she took his details over the phone. Ridiculous for a cancer patient to suffer that kind of jobsworth nonsense.

So many legitimate niggles here! And that's with us all (mostly) keeping up with the changes in technology.

My elderly Dad, who passed earlier this year aged 84, kept up with some things, but certainly struggled with some modern stuff.

I can imagine getting to your 80's, living alone, and having no one to explain how to work the spaceage TV (for eg), so you just end up staring at the wall. You can see how older people, with no nearby support network, might just give up.

That's really ridiculous, your poor DH.

I was doing something recently, to do with my Dad's estate, and I had to speak to someone on the phone. It took eons to get through all the robotic options before speaking to a human, and every time I felt like I was getting somewhere (with a human), the call disconnected. I had to call back about 4 times. Whenever I was disconnected, the call handler never rang me back. They just moved on to the next call. 😡

I have another one. Our energy supplier is EON. They stalk me continuously for meter readings! The Gas meter is easy to get to, it's in the garden, but the Electricity meter, for some reason (!) is at the back to the understairs cupboard, which of course is rammed with stuff. So to get to it, I have to empty the whole cupboard and crawl in there with a torch. I don't want to do this every 4 weeks! But if I don't, they bombard me with email after email, or worse still, send a man to knock my door and ask to come in to read the meter, and it's always early evening when I am in my pyjamas, about to dish up the dinner. I don't want a strange man in my home! Bog off!

I miss the days when you could phone (often a local number) and speak to someone about your problem which would get quickly sorted.

Now you phone, have to listen to a message tell you how they are, ‘experiencing a high volume of calls’ and telling you to phone back later. You then have to listen to endless options and press numbers, hash keys and numbers in your postcode before you’re put through to someone you can barely hear who doesn’t give a shit about the fact that they are now charging you £90 for your broadband package because you’re gone out of contract and tells you £86 if you ‘lock in’ for a further 2 years is a very competitive price!

Now you phone, have to listen to a message tell you how they are, ‘experiencing a high volume of calls’ and telling you to phone back later.

This infuriates me. Every single company or government department is “currently experiencing high volumes of calls”, every single day, no matter what time you call.

Then employ some more staff to answer your fecking phones, because it’s not going to get any better! 🤬

Exactly. It's not a high volume of calls, it's a low volume of staff!

The information over-load of the purchasing experience:

1. welcome to Imporium.com
2. Imporium have received your order for a wibbly-woo
3. PayPal confirmation of your payment
4. your order has been dispatched
5. Hi, we've received your parcel at DropIt.co.uk
6. parcel at DropIt warehouse, Rummigde, West Midlands
7. parcel at DropIt delivery super-hub, Suburbiton, London
8. your parcel is out for delivery
9. parcel delivered; here's a picture of it in your hand (yes I know that happened)
10. how did we do? Rate DropIt delivery out of ten
11. Imporium here; rate your recent purchase of a wibbly-woo
12. DropIt reminder to rate your delivery experience
13. Imporium reminder to rate recent purchase & enter prize drawer
14. some weeks later after you are sure you've ticked the privacy box (or un-ticked the communication box)... special offer on wibbly-woos at Imporium (our system knows you like wibbly-woos, but is completely unaware that wibbly-woos last for years, but it's going to pester the fuck out of you until you buy another one).

Me too. I thought I’d skip them this time to bring out the rantiness!

I thought I'd avoid fees by printing my own tickets to a gig. No I had to pay extra for the privilege of using my own printer ink.

Thankfully we don't have to book in advance to go swimming. One abomination that hasn't made it up here ....... yet.

Recently, my supermarket had to delay my food delivery. I get that sometimes thay happens.

But why is the default "we will deliver tomorrow at unspecified time", with wanting to cancel it or chose a time as things you need to call for and spend time on hold for. Why not use that handy technology to have a box you pick on the app.

I do like not having to go to the supermarket though. Online food shopping is usually brilliant.

Everything was easier years ago. Now it’s all faff.

I hate it when they say they are experiencing a higher volume of calls than usual....all the time ...so the high volume of calls is the usual.

When youre on hold the dreadful lift music stops for a second and you think you've reached a human....but actually its the automated message that tells you "did you know this would be much easier and quicker if you used our app/website"

Well duh, im calling because the stupid chatbot cant answer anything except the most basic questions that I can already get the answers to on the website!! Or its a complicated issue that cant be resolved online or on the app. Literally no one is queuing listening to shit music for 50 min for a problem they could have resolved in 10 seconds online, however much you want to pretend that!

No, m and s ( side eye ) everytime I pop in your food store for milk and bread , I do not need to fill out a survey for it. It was fine , you need more staff but you already know that.

Just about everything.
Modern life is pretty crap comparatively. Sadly, those who are young only hear about the negatives of the past and have no experience of what it was like. And it is really hard to explain. But yes, things like appliances lasting. Not breaking down. There were not rows of gambling shops on a high street, and chicken shops. Or similar. I could write a huge essay on it.
Standards were better in many places. Young people have Saturday jobs. And then apprenticeships and jobs. People worked.
There were not the creature comforts we have now. And we had strikes and problems but that was only a short period in a long ‘yesterday’.
But frankly, in many ways, society was more cohesive, the weather was more tolerable. There were not drugs everywhere and nor so many cars clogging up the roads. The prisons were not full up.
Music was real and brilliant. People were creative.
DV and sexism has not gone away. But I could walk down the high street and know I would not be sent flying by someone on a scooter. And that anyone walking with a guide dog would be treated with respect and given a wide berth on a pavement.
We have lost a lot somewhere. I don’t think it possible to get it back. The internet is good but also very bad. And has destroyed something.

People had more respect. I feel it’s become far to me
me me and people cba to be courteous or friendly anymore.

There is just so much disrespect now. I was nearly knocked down walking in a local beauty spot alone by three men in balaclavas on e-bikes. My husband has been deliberately driven off a path by youths on motorbikes in balaclavas doing the same .
I came across three teenage boys burning bird boxes for fun . They had been hand made and painted and painstakingly mounted on trees but these boys thought it was fun to set them alight. Then set fires in woodland for a laugh. When challenged they jeered and when reported to the police the police said call the fire department it's nothing to do with us.

An elderly lady had her bag and purse ripped from her in a car park in broad daylight at a shopping centre . The culprits were teenage girls who knocked her over. They laughed at her.

There just seems to be so much callous disrespect and entitlement.

Yes!!

I love Vinted but that's the same!

It even e-mails me to tell me I've downloaded the QR code whilst I am trying to scan the QR code at the locker. The e-mail drops over the code when I'm trying to scan it! Aargh!

Clothes shopping. On the high street. It used to be such an enjoyable day out.

Not least because there were clothes you actually could see yourself wearing and shops didn't expect you to act as unpaid cashiers and packers. 😡

I've just thought of another one - ink related!

If you want me to print my own ticket or boarding pass, please don't cover it with HUGE blocks of colour! I don't want to print an Easyjet boarding pass and use up all of my orange ink in the process, thanks! So then you have to try to crop the image, to get rid of the huge block of colour, which is such a fucking faff and it resizes it, so the thing either comes out with font the size of an elephant, or an ant - and you won't know which until it's printed, and you've wasted more ink because it's the wrong size. 😫

I think the demise of the high street is a tragedy. When I think of the joy of trawling round the shops in a big town on a Saturday, and the exciting bustle of Christmas. And the day-to-day shops in my small town: fruit&veg, ironmongers, Woolworths…

It’s had the unfortunate knock-on of displacing people from the shops to experiences . A local National Trust place ten years ago was nice and peaceful. Now you have to book just to get in the grounds.

Apps for absolutely everything. "Are you happy ordering your meal on our app?" No I'll order from a human thanks.

I don't order on apps
I don't order on GR codes
I don't order on screens

I'll go to the small indie coffee shop or cafe where they have menus or a board on the wall behind the counter and someone talks to me instead of expecting me to do the work for them.

The information over-load of the purchasing experience:

Even my GP's surgery does this. Example when I went for my flu jab - please rate your experience very good/good/bad/abysmally awful. I said it was very good.

Survey bot - Please tell us why you gave that rating

Me - because it was very good.

I mean, WTF do you want me to say? I turned up, got the jab, left. I could have added that the surgery needs redecoration and 3/4 weeks for an appointment is ridiculous, but would anyone have taken any notice?

I'm staying in a hotel at the moment. Twice a day I get messages demanding that I RATE THEM! I've only just been here a few days. Leave me alone!

Everything was better before the internet and the privatisations of gas, electricity, the post, railways, water, the buses…..

GPs - we could get home visits, and an appointment with the GP of our choice within 48 hours
Schools - they had catchment areas. You lived in the catchment area, you went to the nearest school. There was none of the parents gaming the system, like renting to get into a “good” school. Children being driven to schools all over the town in pursuit of “good” school.
Buses - they were run by the local council. As a child, I could get a bus into town for 2p. Now, there’s a plethora of bus companies, that charge a fortune. We can’t get to a neighbouring town B from our town. We either have to catch a bus to town C or D to get a bus to B!
Gas - every town had a gas holder. They may not have held much, but as I understand it, the UK has very little gas in store, and is reliant on overseas gas? What happens to us, if other countries decide to keep their own?
Water - we are charged more and more to pay dividends to overseas shareholders, while our rivers and seas are polluted with sewage due to under investment
Automated menus - we used to be able to ring up, speak to a real person, and get the problem sorted (or we could write a letter). Not anymore - we end up speaking to overseas call centres, who stick to a script and are totally incomprehensible and useless!
Parking - a plethora of apps, which don’t work, if there’s no phone reception
The post - expensive and delayed
The railways - a confusing array of tickets, forever going up in price