Tech Me to Death

My daughters, and some of the folks where I work, and at Dollar Shave Club, where I used to work, get a kick out of my tech unsavviness. Which is unusual because I grew up with the advent of the personal computer, the internet and the smartphone.

At some point however, what was once simple, even for a feeble-minded Calculus minor in college, has become way, way too complicated. Hence, many advertising briefs, particularly in the car world default to: "We design technology for humans."

Duh!

There's a medical building at 20th and Santa Monica Blvd. It's where Deb used to go for oncology visits and chemo infusions. And it's where my brother is going for his medical needs. Getting into the parking lot at this facility is quite easy. Getting out is another story.

In order to cut costs the folks who operate the parking lot and collect the fees decided they could dispense with human ticket takers (labor) and have installed an automatic ticket reader/payment machine necessary for egress. Unfortunately, and because many of the clientele are in their 50, 60, 70's and 900's thanks to the miracle of Methusalah-enabling medicine, the machine is impossibly complicated.

Consequently the line of geriatrics waiting to pay for their parking gets exceedingly long. To remedy this stupid situation, they have stationed a young man in a parking lot attendant uniform who stands next to said machine and guides people through the process.

Anyone else see the incongruity here? 

I would posit that this tiny lack of foresight and business acuity is indicative of what ails American businesses. Too much technology. Not enough thinking. And zero efficiency.

It's why I used to walk into meetings or creative presentations, not with 5 or 6 key people in attendance but with two full football team's worth of people, and the coaches and the waterboys/watergirls.

That issue has been resolved by Covid.

And replaced by another annoying dilemma, the plethora of work platforms. Yes, I am grateful these software assistants permit me to work at home, drink my own coffee, workout when I want to and use my own bathroom facilities, sometimes even with the door open.

My personal hate-favorites include: Asana, Figma, Jira, and a few more whose names would work just as well as a car badge for a new Korean export.

If I remember the jargon from my days working on Apple, these programs have a "cluegy" interface that lacks any intuition and more indecipherable options than the old Carnegie Deli in NYC.

I spend more time trying to figure out what someone needs me to do, than actually doing it. If that's happening to me, I suspect it's happening to millions of other workers. That's a Giant Time Suck. And robbing precious time from other daytime activities.

Maybe in the interest of self preservation the folks at Facebook or Tik Tok could design some better office tools.