[SoftTalker]

Have you ever worked for a large corporation? Have you seen how bureaucratic everything is? It's the nature of the beast. It's not calculated, and not personal. It's a process scaled to deal with thousands or millions of people. That's why when I have a problem with my internet service, I never call, or use the website, or use the app. I go to the Xfinity retail store and talk to someone. I almost always leave satisfied.

[sgentle]

> It's not calculated, and not personal.

It doesn't have to be either of these things to be intentional. Pretty much every large system is too complex to be calculated or personal in the way we would apply those terms to a human. However, you can still describe a system as having values and goals, still analyse it in terms of its incentives and the mechanisms it evolves to achieve them in its environment.

The incentives are continued YoY growth, the environment is a saturated market, and so the mechanisms are monopolistic and anti-consumer practices. "Go to the Xfinity retail store" doesn't prove anything except that you passed an effort gate, segmenting you away from someone working two jobs with young children at home. 1% of customers costing the company $10 is the same as 100% of customers costing them 10c, with the added benefit that your segment is more likely to hurt retention than the one with no time or energy for comparison-shopping.

Did a single person design and orchestrate this state of affairs? Unlikely, but the company as a whole is more than capable of blobbing its bureaucratic way towards more efficient digestion of your funds. Never underestimate dumb optimisation processes at scale. Given enough time, such processes have turned monkeys into Shakespeare.

[asimpletune]

One can feel rage if something is intentional and annoying, unintentional but annoying, intentional and not annoying, unintentional and not annoying.

The first is justified. The second is understandable but a case of confusing it with the first. The last two also happen, and are not justified nor understandable.

Unfortunately there is currently an excess of the first case. I think people are arguing this is a problem. It probably causes the other 3 to happen more too.

[bluefirebrand]

> Have you ever worked for a large corporation? Have you seen how bureaucratic everything is? It's the nature of the beast. It's not calculated, and not personal

Yes I have, yes I have, yes it is, it absolutely is calculated, but you're right it's not personal.

It's "just good business"

But it absolutely is calculated. I've been in those rooms when those calculations were made. I've resigned in disgust when my pleas for them to show some humanity were ignored so they could continue turning the screws on their customers

You're absolutely wrong. It's calculated as hell

[pessimizer]

> But it absolutely is calculated. I've been in those rooms when those calculations were made.

It's insane. I've watched so many people ridicule basic descriptions of utterly mundane predatory business strategies as "conspiracy theories" who I know for a fact have sat in meetings planning (or being told to implement) them.

I think that middle class professionals are so deeply in denial that they don't believe that they themselves exist. The avoidance of the moral consequences of their own work blinds them to anything that reminds them of what they do.

[bluefirebrand]

Yeah I tend to agree with you

I don't blame people too much though. I'm pretty lucky to be in a place in my life where I can afford to comfortably resign in protest if I don't like what my bosses are doing. Not everyone is that fortunate, so I get it and I don't blame those people

My beef is with people who are never satisfied and maybe never can be satisfied. People who have enough money to retire literally today and still enjoy the rest of their lives... But instead they keep doing everything they can to make more and more money for basically no reason other than "I have a bigger number than you do"

[BrenBarn]

Maybe that means we shouldn't have so many large corporations.

[pessimizer]

> It's the nature of the beast. It's not calculated, and not personal.

These are simply weird declarations that you're making, and 20 years ago the world was not like this.

> It's a process scaled to deal with thousands or millions of people.

You're saying this as if there weren't thousands or millions of people 20 years ago.

> I go to the Xfinity retail store and talk to someone. I almost always leave satisfied.

I've never seen an Xfinity retail store in my life. I guess we have to wait until they close them all for you to stop patronizing people. Everybody here understands how businesses work, and we also understand why they cut services and quality. People are not confused or ignorant, they're angry that they don't have functioning governments, so these companies don't have to compete anymore.

[joquarky]

BTW, there's a lot of unsubstantiated projection in your comment.

[giardini]

You say "these companies don't have to compete anymore". How can you justify that statement? Do you have a reference/statistic/URL?