40oz

I probably sound like an old head but I wanna draw attention to things that will forever be hopelessly irritating to me. So much technology around us which are there to make our lives easier are overloaded with additional features and/or are unreasonably complicated to use.

My biggest peeve is found at my workplace. Since I've started working there, I've noticed many changes in the way my workplace operates. I work in a fast-paced convenience store called Wawa. We're known for our fresh coffee and quick built-to-order hoagies. Some things about the functionality of my workplace stem from it's constant desire to provide faster and higher quality service. Unfortunately, instead of giving employees more extensive training, the company relies on more efficient technology. Our hoagies are ordered through a few touch screen menus located in front of the deli, so instead of customers telling us how to make their hoagies, they select the items they want on the menu instead, and when their order is complete, it prints out a receipt with a bar code that they can bring to the register to pay while they wait for the employees to make the order that was electronically received on the other end.

It's certainly fast and efficient. My gripe with it is that no technology is completely unbreakable. If for whatever reason our touch screens are not working, or our printers are not printing, or our monitors are not receiving the orders placed, we have no alternative way to take orders.

We also have a cappuccino machine that provides hot water if someone wants to make their own tea. But every once in a while the machine craps out and they can't get their hot water. Then I have to look like a fucking moron by telling them that I have no way to get them something as simple as hot water because the cappuccino machine can't get it's act together.

Another thing we have is a giant lottery ticket vending machine that happens to regularly have a message flashing on the screen saying "CURRENTLY OUT OF SERVICE" for at least a couple of hours each day for no apparent reason. In an idealistic case we could just hand our customers lottery tickets through the exchange of a couple dollars at the register like most places do but as long as our machine is down there is nothing we can do about it.

Among those things are the many other improvements in technology that are putting an enormous decline in my faith in what our future will be like. My TV has six different video modes even though the only things plugged into it are a DVD player and a Nintendo Wii. Getting a new cell phone plan or changing your number can be the most complicated thing in the world for customer service AND the customer. My cell phone has more apps than I know what to do with, but all I want it for is to have service so I can make and receive calls and text messages, and often times I can't even have that. It's a pain in the ass transmitting pictures from my digital camera to my computer. Half of the buttons on my TV remote literally do nothing. I just can't seem to get the things that I want simplified to few specific things

It's really disheartening to know that it's near impossible to go to Best Buy to get something that will perform a single task very well. Every individual thing wants to be everything at once. Usually you need to call a professional to take care of these overly complicated things you'd otherwise be able to take care of yourself if it made any sense. And even when you do, they do one little things and it's magically repaired.

Makes me wanna start a business that manufactures some kind of device that people will become dependent on in their daily lives, and make it prone to malfunction, and the only way to repair them is with some kind of encrypted password or key that only my business's tech crew will know. That way I don't really have to train my tech crew to know how to do anything besides that simple miracle cure password to all the machines, the demand for service will be high, and so the income flow would be high as well. Unfortunately I don't have the heart (or lack thereof) to do that.