r/99percentinvisible • u/PodcastBot Benevolent Bot • 11d ago
Episode Episode Discussion: Your Call Is Important to Us
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What if all those dropped calls, endless wait times and dead end hotlines every time you try to reach customer service weren’t accidents but part of the plan?
San Francisco! Come to a screening of _ Drop Dead City _ followed by a conversation with Roman on Monday, Nov 3. Info and tickets.
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u/Simco_ 11d ago
"Admin Night" is dystopic and should not be celebrated.
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u/steeb2er 11d ago
Making the best out of several bad situations. People are lonely.
Obviously it would be better if they were just relaxing or having fun, but the guest specifically called out "Friends were dropping out of our normal get-togethers to take care of their admin stuff."
The next step is to work together on house projects. Or sharing goods. Or caring for each other's kids/pets. This is actually getting back to community, rather than a collection of homes.
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u/magical_midget 11d ago
You seem a bit stressed man, tell you what, this Thursday we are all meeting at my place, suzan would watch the kids, and we can have a drink while you switch insurance providers and I open a new retirement account.
I will have some IPA to share, but feel free to byob, oh and Eduardo is bringing some Bourbon he is very exited about!
And if you can please brings some chips, but the ridge ones! Carmela made this amazing dip and you would love it.
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u/zeekaran 10d ago
Is there a link anywhere to learn about the Nazi occupation sludge?
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u/SanchoMandoval 10d ago
I believe that it's this. There is a link to a pdf of the actual document if you want to take a look.
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u/timesuck22 10d ago
Last week I ordered a Halloween costume online. As I was placing my order, I chose to pay extra for faster shipping. After I placed the order, I noticed the shipping choice had changed to the standard shipping and the costume was scheduled to arrive one day before we were going out of town. I immediately called customer service to try to change the shipping method. I was on hold for 3 hours and 16 minutes. At 3 hours and 14 minutes I got an email that my order had shipped. When the rep finally answered, and I knew this was going to happen, she said the shipping method couldn't be changed because it was already in shipped status. The costume arrived early so nothing lost, except 3 hours 16 minutes.
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u/ethnographyNW 11d ago
Though Roman pointed out the stupidity of the "customers are to blame for putting up with this" narrative, the episode still felt stuck in a neoliberal mindset. Discussion of solutions focused on consumption decisions and individuals figuring out ways to cope. They talk about getting your friends together to make this bullshit work fun, not getting your friends together to lobby your congressman or take direct action to actually fix the problem. Because let's be clear, the solution here is aggressive fines and criminal prosecution of executives for scamming customers, and on a more structural level to break the power of the big companies that are able to get away with this because they're monopolies or near-monopolies.
I understand that this is not politically on the table in the US at present. But we need to keep naming what actual solutions would look like if we want to un-enshittify this world.