Has anybody else here experienced high than usual levels of incompetence dealing with personnel in offices, stores etc lately?

Yes, for a recent example: the management agency of my apartment building. They are extremely behind in their accounting and the staff I have spoken to seem to be in a fog. They can't seem to communicate across their own departments. It's a very large agency in Geneva. I'm a not alone among my crabby eldergay Swiss crowd. We have noticed Swiss efficiency and excellence took a HUGE hit during COVID.

Same explanation I gave years ago, only they're getting worse:

'Crack (Grand)Babies with jobs.'

Three words: Work from Home.

Yes, it's dismal out there. I agree with everything you said, OP.

Just smoke copious amounts of pot, silly!

Who cares. I likely make 4X the amount of money that they do, so I try to be patient.

I feel like I am always dealing with people who are new to their jobs.

All the bullshit coddling of the so-called "essential workers" during the pandemic went to their empty little heads. (Hope they saved those undeserved tips monies they shamed out of their customers.)

My neighbors and I have all but deserted one of our area grocery chain stores due to rude, incompetent staffers, that and the chain's exorbitant food prices.

Drop a dime on them via Yelp, too.

Well it's one thing for clerks in a shop to be incompetent. (It is what it is, though not very pleasant.) But there are certain offices that do deal in important matters - medical offices, billing departments of essential utilities and services, banks, schools, government, etc. We really do want and need competent staff in those jobs.

[quote] Am I just being the usual tinfoil hat elder gay chick

You sound like the usual Karen who if she doesn’t speak to a manager about all these inconveniences she’s going to explode.

The problem is all these businesses - big and small - are cutting back to save money. Years ago "new hires" in stores, offices, banks, drugstores, supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, etc. went through a 'training process' (usually 2 weeks on average) before they dealt with the customer on their own. Not any more. Now you're hired, you 'shadow' someone for a day - maybe two - and then you're on your own. It's you and the computer in front of you - follow the prompts, and you're good to go. Who suffers ? We, the customers.

Lately! They've always been miserable and useless fucks.

Corporate Greed is pretty much always the answer to every problem out there. This is no different.

I can't speak for the public, but I work in a professional setting and there were more personal conflicts among employees this week alone than I've ever seen.

Yes - I had the most idiotic conversation while making an appointment.

Me: Do you have an appointment for later this morning?

Reception: Sure, how about 5pm?

Me: Do you have something ealier?

Reception: 3pm?

Me: So, there is nothing later this morning?

Of course, there were multiple slots open between 10am and noon.

Yes, customer service has gotten even worse, but I also think it’s that I’ve gotten older and have even less patience with ineptitude.

I’ve had a week of this crap; trying to schedule a water heater installation, making an appointment at a new dentist, working with insurance after a huge rock hit my windshield. In each case, I first had a total young airhead on the phone who had no clue how to handle anything. Insurance and water heater, finally got older women who were customer service pros and solved everything quickly and efficiently, and as for the dentist office, I talked to the Head Gay in Charge who was so wonderful I almost wanted to ask him out, sight unseen!

Yes, OP. Been noticing this for the past several years. Our collective physical and mental health is declining, along with our cognitive functioning. The consequences are obvious and seem to have negatively affected every level of society.

I think it's because wages are too low. No one in a customer-facing role gives a fuck because they're all making 28k a year.

Because they don't give a fuck about you, op.

OP, I've definitely noticed this. I've been trying to find a new PCP, and when I talk to the office staff, it's like talking to stoned teenagers. No one knows what's going on; I get different answers depending on whom I talk to, and I receive a who-cares attitude that blows my mind.

In short, it's not you. I wish I had advice, but I don't.

[quote]OP, I've definitely noticed this. I've been trying to find a new PCP, and when I talk to the office staff, it's like talking to stoned teenagers. No one knows what's going on; I get different answers depending on whom I talk to, and I receive a who-cares attitude that blows my mind.

And that's because this younger workforce is just not that invested in their jobs. I've been saying this for years. The average 'shelf life' of these younger workers staying in a job is about three months - then they quit and find 'something more challenging'. So why bother learning the job or wanting to do their best ?

Oh good god yes!!! Been noticing this for years. Professionalism and work ethic are dead.

I went to Dunkin' this morning to order a large iced decaf, black. The 20-something year old guy waiting on me first poured me an 'original blend' Iced Coffee. When he handed it to me I reminded him I ordered an Iced Decaf black.

He doesn't apologize, doesn't make eye contact, doesn't say anything - emptied the original blend, refills the ice in the cup and then fills it with Ice Green Tea. I tell him again I ordered an Iced Decaf coffee black, and now he just stares at me. Again, no apology, no communication - just staring at me. The manager was standing next to him at this time, so she moved in and told me 'no worries' - and she poured the Iced Decaf Black for me.

Isn't this a broad post-pandemic phenomenon? Just noticing now, OP?

We’ve had a revolving door of younger employees (think just out of college) at my office. They do not take direction at all. If you tell them to do something, you’re a bully. If you don’t tell them to do something, you’re setting them up for failure.

And R20 I am in the same boat. I need a new doc and just getting callbacks is impossible.

Retail and customer service are dead. Nobody wants to be paid minimum wage to be belittled and physically attacked. They're scraping the bottom of the barrel. I went into a CVS the other day; boxes piled up all over the place, and yet nothing was stocked, and the few items that were on the shelves weren't faced. The one cashier there was also the floor worker. It was depressing.

Yup: It’s especially called, “Please help me not rip my eyes out as I try to explain to my elderly parent’s prescription mail-order service over the phone how they started, then cancelled, the processing and sending of dad’s 2-weeks-late essential medicine for the third time” saga. It’s fun to get transferred, and then call-dropped, four times between their customer service, pharmacists, broken voice menu options, and stoner music while on hold.

Customers themselves are at an all-time high in nastiness. It works both ways.

I doubt all of you are the saintly, eternally patient types.

Everyone has gotten worse. Employees, customers. People are sick of each other.

Not since I switched to Depends, dearie

I think a lot of it depends on where you live. What kind of town.

The Dr situation is horrendous. I choose Drs who have admirable schooling and good reviews and lengthy sales pitches about themselves on their websites.

I show up for an appointment and *whoops* I’ve been placed with some underling of unknown provenance.

I’ve gotten to the point with customer service that I want the overseas person rather than the shit-for-brains NYer with an IQ of 60 who can’t think beyond getting someone off the phone in 2 sentences or less. This usually means repeating the first sentence with greater disdain and zero imagination for problem-solving.

The foreigners resolve and have decent manners.

My mother was scheduled to see a cancer specialist in a city about 100 mi. away. She worried and worried for a month. My sister drove her that day, and when they arrived they were told he wasn't there, wasn't scheduled to be there, had no appointments for that day.

R32 yeah the switcheroo thing could be another thread itself.

I get that these low paying jobs are not great. But they put food on someone's table and gas in their cars. One of these days they will all be replaced by AI equipped bots. Then these retail workers will just have to work at a call center. Oh wait, those are gone too. Well they can do landscaping. Oh wait, the Mexicans do it better, faster and cheaper. Well they can move to the city and live on the street and do meth or heroin. It's not going to get better for any of us any time soon. Especially people who live paycheck to paycheck. Better start hustling a bit more kids. Y'all are screwed.

I went to the gynecologist. I said, “I have a urinary tract infection. Can I leave a specimen to go to the lab?”

The assistant (they’re not nurses anymore because there haven’t been nurses for in doctors offices for 30 years) was dumbfounded. I was there for an annual visit…pap smear, breast exam and medication renewal. I happened to have a urinary tract infection. I’m a nurse, I know when I have a UTi but I need a prescription for macrodantin and doctors want to send a culture off to make sure they have the right bacteria.

Long story short, she never sent the urine to a lab. She never even dipped it in the office.

I never received a snail mailed notice of my Pap smear result. I never had it listed on my hospital patient portal (my gyn is affiliated …it should be there).

Waited a week for my pharmacy to refill my RXs. It wasn’t done. I called and told them: I need drugs X,Yand Z filled. The dosage is blah, blah, blah, my pharmacy phone number is xxxx-xxxx.

Why the fuck did I go there?

Why did I waste my time?

Since I'm a retired nurse, I knew someone screwed up and I know how to say, “I need this, this and this,……please correct this. Thank you.”

But the average person doesn’t. I can understand how they’d get really upset it’s their health, they waited weeks for an appointment, they paid for it, they rearranged their schedule…wtf is going on?

My landlord deposited my rental check but it went into my checking account- an account that is still open but I never use. We figured out that he was dealing with a trainee who didn't understand what a paper check was, and just deposited it to the address on the check.

I discovered the error because I had to print-out financial information for a lawyer appointment that day. It looked like I had tried to deceptively transfer money from one account to another.

Because we live in a corporate hellscape where we exist solely to be a tool in making corporations more money. They have no motivation to employ talented, intelligent people, or pay them fairly.

They want tepid, uncurious humans to do the bare minimum - as they're told - take the bare minimum in pay, and we either have to accept it or find another option.

[quote]I tried to get a doctor to call me back to slightly alter a diagnosis she made

You need to doctor to lie so you don’t have to pay for something.

My husband is so delusional. He’s always waiting for Doctor offices to call him.

“I went to the GI doctor but he wants me to see the cardiologist. They’re sending everything to the cardiologists office but the cardiologist hasn’t called to make an appointment for me.”

“That’s not how it works. You check to see which cardiologist accepts your insurance, you call, you make an appointment. You tell the cardiologist ‘my GI dr wants me see a cardiologist so I can have a colonoscopy.’. That’s all the info the cardiologist needs. He doesn’t need anything from your doctor.””

“But my records…”

“He doesn’t need your records. This isn’t Ben Casey. Call the cardiologist and make an appointment, all you need is to give him your GI doctor’s name, phone and fax, if that.”

It’s really difficult because his mother is 99 years old, lives 2 hours away and has been diagnosed with cancer. She needs to see multiple doctors and have multiples scans/tests

And he’s all, “I’m waiting the surgeon’s office to call me to make an appointment to see him” and “I’m waiting for the oncologist make the appointment for her scan and get back to me.”

TBH, they did used to do that in the old days. But move the fuck on…you have to do everything yourself now.

Definitely. People seem fed up and over it all. People are still polite but the younger types seem overwhelmed and depressed. Poor youths.

No I’m getting about the usual level of competence.

A lot of it is people are high. Weed is legal, even in places where it isn’t legal. People drive to states where it’s legal, load up at different places, bring it back and sell it to their friends. Go read your average Reddit and every male poster is high. Every male over 11 is high. The girls usually wait til they get home to get baked, but the males are like, “Bro, I can’t work unless I’m high.”

Then they slough down caffeinated energy drinks.

“I can’t brah, I can’t stay awake without it.”

My father fought WW2 on a tin cup of powdered coffee a day, but they can’t get through 4 hours at their counter job without a shitload of weed and 40 oz of super-caffeinated beverages.

And r10 sounds like the typical lower-class trash who uses the term “Karen.”

At least your out-of-date, racist, sexist slang lets the rest of us know we’re dealing with trash.

Late stage terminal capitalism. Everyone’s given up, climate catastrophe is upon us, billionaires are making plans to retreat to their bunkers. On some level, people know it’s over and they don’t give a fuck anymore.

People,don’t smoke cigarettes anymore. That was a huge stress reliever and used to keep me sharp at work, It’s a stimulant and a relaxant. It kept us hyper focused. Now people are the opposite. They’re stoned.

But at least COPD rates will go down (once they all switch to edibles).

Don't even try to defend the disgusting smoking habit, R47.

The economy is so good you can just walk off the job, get on your phone and find a new one.

In the defence of the workers who have to deal with people like this…

The 'doctor office problems' we are all dealing with today is beyond poor customer service. For the past five years (or longer) big corporations have (in my area 'Care New England' and 'Lifespan') been running your doctor's offices, and telling them what to do - and plenty of doctors are now leaving private practice.

My PCP is 52 years old. I'm fortunate I found him ten years ago (and have recommended him to a few close friends and family members), as he's 'that good', along with other docs in his practice. At my last visit, he was telling me 'off the record' how bad its become - big corporate idiots are making decisions for his patients, and over-riding his. It' all about 'saving money' - starting with cutting his staff. It's all about making a profit.

As for my doc, he said he's been thinking of going with one of two options in the next couple of years: becoming a concierge doctor (totally independent of big corp) or becoming a professor at a local medical school at an Ivy League university.

A little off-topic...I went to a Tom Thumb and an item I wanted was sold out. I asked the customer service department if they offered rain checks. She was like..."What?" I think a lot of it has to do with age. Many of us grew up in the "Pen and paper" era and many workers today, especially in retail, don't have any offline skills. If it's not on the screen in front of them, they're lost.

I’ˆm owed a retention bonus from my last job from which I was laid off last October. HR keeps giving me the runaround. They tell me that there is a freeze on retention bonuses for now (!) I would get a lawyer, but that expense would be too much for me. Just general incompetence at work. So frustrating.

R39/R46 are the correct answers.

R53 You shouldn't wait for too long. You don't necessarily need a lawyer. I would write to your state labor board and tell them this was owed to you.

The AMA was a very powerful organization with a lot of clout. They fought universal health care for DECADES. Looks like they’ve been deballed by insurance companies.

Thanks, R55!

AMA: The government isn’t going to tell me how to practice medicine! This will not happen. We will fight, fight, fight!

AMA 50 years later: The insurance companies are telling me how to practice medicine! Umm…ok!

Customer service is at an ATL. This is the new normal. You’re just now noticing this? You’re slow….

Im the OP of this thread and I just wanna include my latest experience with Spectrum today. Everybody knows Spectrum sucks and has sucked for a long time but im always amazed at their schemes they come up with to screw over their customers that are forced to use them for internet service.

I was stupid enough about a decade ago to include my bank account details with them so they could remotely withdraw the amount of money i owe for each bill. They ended up stealing over thousand dollars over what i actually owed and wouldn't return it so i sued them in small claims court. They sent a lawyer to fight it. I couldn't get the proof from Spectrum that they had in their records that i never received the services for which they overbilled me for so I lost the case. I then decided to contact my bank and claim money was stolen from my account for services they never provided. The bank returned the money but what a waste of time and effort to have to spend on all that.

I wont bother you with all the gory details of today's issue other than to say my router /modem stopped working after some liquid got on it. i bought the same model of modem/router to replace it and when i called their tech support to register it and hook it up to their network they made up some bs that they no longer accept that equipment on their network even though the same make and model worked fine before the liquid spill. It's obvious they are trying to force me to pay to rent a modem/router from them again rather than using my own.

Woman, here. I went to the doctor a few weeks ago, was weighed, and weigh 125. Little did I know, the assistant charted me as 152. Today I went back for a follow up, and my chart was flagged because I lost 16% of my body weight in 15 days. I told her I was not on Ozempic and that her idiot assistant transposed it. My chart said "overweight" and had my BMI listed at 25 because of this shit. Luckily, I was not getting an in office procedure that called for anesthesia, or I'd get 27 pounds too much. I was also shocked that 152 at 5'4 is considered overweight, if that's true, than the rest of the world is morbidly obese.

I have to say that sometimes I am impressed by the quality of over-the-phone customer service. I think the now ubiquitous use of customer satisfaction surveys must have something to do with it.

These poor people are probably autistic and have ADHD, then you old people start bitching, they can't help it, it's not their fault it wasn't diagnosed correctly! Grouchy old folx.

Have not noticed any issues with in-person interactions -- between us my partner and I have a whole lot of doctor appointments and pharmacy visits, and shop and eat out regularly, and they all go as smoothly as ever. My phone interactions are no more frustrating than they ever were, and have actually seemed to improve. R62 called about it about those customer surveys. We're surveyed up the wazoo!

People know they're less and less likely to be called out on their incompetence bc of the mollycoddling that the younger gen has enabled and normalized. For example, anyone who complains is automatically a Karen, or showing their privilege etc etc. People do not fear consequences anymore bc of the certain backlash that will ensue.

I love how you only speak with an American when they're trying to sell you something but for customer service, you are booted down to some call center in Mumbai.

Yes. It’s getting out of control and it’s affecting my quality of life. Running errands, setting up appointments have become a job itself.