A slight vent.
I hate how much businesses and employers expect customers and employees to do on their own with the internet now. I hate being told "just go to [insert website here] and fill out [insert process here], it's EASY!" with a practiced smile. I'm not technologically illiterate, but somehow it's NEVER easy--the signups for "fun" websites like Tumblr and DeviantArt and Spotify take fifteen minutes max, whereas signups for job applications and insurance and retirement and banking and healthcare and other registration forms seem to end up eating two hours of my life each time, often ask for deeply sensitive information (like my social security number), and often involve a call to tech support, which is usually outsourced, and they just repeat the same instructions back to me.
Also, there's this infuriating cycle where (to take recovering my retirement fund from my previous job, for instance) the employer says you must talk to the (in this case retirement) company and settle things from THEIR end, while every time you call the company, the company says it's your EMPLOYER's place to do that, and you must talk to THEM. Sending you on an infuriating "ring-around-the-rosy" trip, that never seems to end, where no one ever seems to cooperate (it's apparently unthinkable that they actually get on the phone and talk to each OTHER--nooooo, that's your, the CUSTOMER's job, uwu).
I'm not a technophobe--I love my laptop, I love Tumblr, I love coloring on GIMP, I love YouTube videos, I love digital music collections, and I love video games--but I truly miss the days when these registration-type things would be done on paper. You'd fill out a form and hand it to your employer or healthcare provider or whoever, and that would be the end of it, they'd file it themselves. Now they expect you to go through all these processes on somebody else's website, having to create a thousand different accounts and passwords for third parties, and deal with the third parties yourself if there are any problems at all.
And you have to download ANOTHER dang app for at least half of them, creating even MORE passwords and usernames (and technical problems) to remember! WE USED TO DO ALL THIS WITHOUT APPS. REALLY, WE DID!!
This isn't just about my new job (which I am still very thankful to have), by the way--it has just put this whole phenomenon in my mind right now, because I've been dealing with a lot of it as I'm still getting everything set up.
TL;DR--I hate how every company and service now expects you--their supposed customer or member--to be the "middleman" with every other company and service FOR them, instead of THEM doing that for YOU, which SHOULD be THEIR JOB! When they absolutely used to do it (lest they forget), when all this was done on paper.
Okay, vent over.
