Pet Peeves!

This blog was launched 15 December 2009, and no matter what we write about, we just don’t seem to entice our readers to leave comments. I’ll bet if the topic was “What do you hate about military life?” or in contrast “What do you love about military life?”……either would be likely to lure many comments.  I’m just guessing the topic of “Pet Peeves” might do the trick equally as well. 

All of us have them!  By definition, a Pet Peeve is “ a minor annoyance that an individual identifies as particularly annoying to them, to a greater degree than others may find it.”

I have several of them, but for simplicity sake I’m going to categorize all of them as poor communications, which would then include those who omit facts as well as those who are poor listeners. It would also take info consideration those who create programs, develop documentation and forms to accommodate those programs and never fully address the Who, What , Where, When and Why of their program.

My first biggie is when (because you live overseas) you choose to email your techie problem to you web host, the manufacturer of your TV or MP3 player, a stateside cell phone provider, etc. Because you know the standard response time is 2 business days and you don’t want to risk wasting another 2 days by having to provide additional information, you make absolutely positively sure you have included every single piece of information about the problem that they could possible use to identify and fix your problem. Really! You know by now exactly what questions they would ask over the phone so you not only give them all the answers to those questions but you might also throw in your sister’s birth date and the make of our first automobile just for good measure. And for sure you tell them why you’re emailing instead of calling their 800 number!

Now………here’s where the Pet Peeve comes in……….two business days later you receive your reply from them at which time they state their understanding of your frustration and thank you for choosing them………..AND THEN…….they recommend you contact their customer service hotline by way of their 800 number. Excuse me, you must have skipped over that part of my initial message.  When you reply, reminding them where you live and why you chose the email option……….you wait another two business days and get a reply that recommends you visit the FAQ section of their website.   After all of this and about a week later you’re hoping you’re beyond that initial contact who expresses their thanks and acknowledges your frustration and that you might actually be communicating with an individual with a technological background who can help you……and of course you have to assume all of your previous communications have been passed along to them. Right?  This is when their reply is something along the lines of “Can you please describe the problem you’re encountering?” At that point, the problem I’m encountering has more to do with idiots running the company than it does my original problem. It also has more to do with large corporations, who are earning large profits off our purchases, hiring non-techies to do techie jobs and hoping to get by with it. By the way, this is not about the people they’re hiring…………I know everybody is doing what ever they can to stay employed and to earn a living these days and many are settling for jobs they might not have considered a year or two ago. But instead of the corporation paying them minimum wage to dodge THEIR bullet for a week or so, they should just train them and pay them more to actually provide the tech support their customers need!!!

You can tell that’s obviously a real thorn in my side. However, in the same category with “A failure to communicate” would be the invitations I receive from local non-profit organizations who are looking for volunteers. Their invitations usually say “It’s time for our annual Blah Blah Blah again, but they fail to tell those of us who are new to the organization what the Blah Blah Blah is, what cause it supports, and often they fail to even mention WHEN the event takes place. I’m lucky if I get the name of it, where it’s being held and how much it will cost me.

And last on my list are the poor planners who start promoting a new program for military spouses (like for instance schools who will help spouses further their education through a grant and use of their spouse’s GI bill) and then fail to design their forms to accept European phone numbers which makes it impossible to submit the form because the phone number is a required field.  Now who would develop a form for military spouses that doesn’t accommodate overseas phone numbers?  There are more than a few of us living here and it’s possible one or two of us might be interested. Yes?

Okay, I feel so much better now. Thanks for letting me vent. I know the Pet Peeves topic is a universal topic and not one that’s unique to military spouses. But that’s the best part about having a blog. You can pretty much post about what ever is on your mind, and I encourage you to do the same in the form of a comment.

After all, it’s all about effectively communicating. Right? You never know. If you express them, perhaps someone might see your comment and do something about fixing it! Okay, probably not, but you’ll feel so much better after talking about it.

MZspouse