"Computer says no"
Mar. 30th, 2012 12:39 pmAnother gratuitous rant, about "Computer says no". Apparently this is from a sketch on the popular TV variety show Little Britain which is probably quite funny.
And I'm certainly annoyed by people who are deliberately clueless.
But whenever I've heard anyone in real life say "Computer says no", they've been referring to someone in a callcentre or other front-line representative of a large organisation, who has been unable to help them with what they wanted.
For instance, I once remember talking to someone on my bank's call centre. I wanted to transfer some money somewhere, but for some reason, the account wouldn't allow it. Earlier that day there had been some sort of inexplicable hold on a different account, which he had just helped me remove. My assumption was that there was a similar problem with my other account, that he needed to remove. His assumption was that I was simply too stupid to realise that I should transfer the money out of my ISA account instead and get off the phone. I mean, he was polite, but he obviously thought "use this other account instead" was the answer, and he didn't understand or care that (a) there might ever be a reason to not spend your ISA rather than your current account and (b) if all my outgoings had to be through the ISA, it'd eventualy run out, and then we'd still need to resolve the mysterious hold. (As always the right answer was to phone the complaints line, who actually understand the banking system and have the power to do things, and removed the hold instantly and said it was all fixed.)
Now, I was certainly very annoyed at the person I was talking to. But also, I strongly suspected that he hadn't declined a large number of training courses on British banking regulations, I suspect he was paid SOLELY for following the script and resolving calls quickly. In which case, I had a very hard time blaming him for being unable or unwilling to help.
But in similar situation, I'd heard someone write it off with a patronising "computer says no" comment, which seemed really annoying, since it seems to imply it's all the fault of the person you're talking to (which is very annoying when it IS, but nowadays, I think people often have no choice but to be a jobsworth). I felt that in a bank, he probably DIDN'T have a way of circumventing the computer system even if he wanted to, so the fault was in whoever established the training and procedures while giving no option for people to actually understand what they were doing, to resolve problems, or to escalate problems to someone who knows anything about them. So I felt the implicit criticism wasn't really accurate, it was more an expression of frustration.
And I'm certainly annoyed by people who are deliberately clueless.
But whenever I've heard anyone in real life say "Computer says no", they've been referring to someone in a callcentre or other front-line representative of a large organisation, who has been unable to help them with what they wanted.
For instance, I once remember talking to someone on my bank's call centre. I wanted to transfer some money somewhere, but for some reason, the account wouldn't allow it. Earlier that day there had been some sort of inexplicable hold on a different account, which he had just helped me remove. My assumption was that there was a similar problem with my other account, that he needed to remove. His assumption was that I was simply too stupid to realise that I should transfer the money out of my ISA account instead and get off the phone. I mean, he was polite, but he obviously thought "use this other account instead" was the answer, and he didn't understand or care that (a) there might ever be a reason to not spend your ISA rather than your current account and (b) if all my outgoings had to be through the ISA, it'd eventualy run out, and then we'd still need to resolve the mysterious hold. (As always the right answer was to phone the complaints line, who actually understand the banking system and have the power to do things, and removed the hold instantly and said it was all fixed.)
Now, I was certainly very annoyed at the person I was talking to. But also, I strongly suspected that he hadn't declined a large number of training courses on British banking regulations, I suspect he was paid SOLELY for following the script and resolving calls quickly. In which case, I had a very hard time blaming him for being unable or unwilling to help.
But in similar situation, I'd heard someone write it off with a patronising "computer says no" comment, which seemed really annoying, since it seems to imply it's all the fault of the person you're talking to (which is very annoying when it IS, but nowadays, I think people often have no choice but to be a jobsworth). I felt that in a bank, he probably DIDN'T have a way of circumventing the computer system even if he wanted to, so the fault was in whoever established the training and procedures while giving no option for people to actually understand what they were doing, to resolve problems, or to escalate problems to someone who knows anything about them. So I felt the implicit criticism wasn't really accurate, it was more an expression of frustration.