Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

A recent experience with a customer-service organization illustrates how much of today’s “can’t” is merely “I don’t want to.”

The topic of this blog is nothing new. That is one of my frustrations as this is an old habit that I wish and wish had gone away in today’s world of inter-networked everything and limitless choice and all those we-are-nearly-at-nirvana promises I often hear.

I have been working with a customer-service organization to get a simple form. I worked on this for six weeks. The customer servers routinely told me, “I will do this, but I cannot do it now.” The customer servers followed this with ten minutes of detailed explanation of how the greater world processes made it impossible for them to do anything now. It would take days.

I immediately called someone else in the greater customer-service organization where I spoke with someone who could—lo and behold—do that impossible-for-today task immediately.

Hmmm. If I could find someone in that organization who could do it now, why couldn’t the first person find that miraculously empowered person? Person the first person had a case of “I don’t want to” vice “I can’t.”

Yes, even in today’s all networked, all empowered, all mobile, all is possible now world…we still find the “I don’t want to and you can’t make me” customer (non)servers.

Nothing to see here. Move along.