OU TORAH

Putting the “Personal” in Personal Responsibility

Rabbi Eliyahu Safran

Original article at: http://www.ou.org/torah/article/personal_responsibility#.T7xrEVLBtAM

In this most interesting article the author notes that he has an error in a utility bill, and silly little boy, he calls the utility company and expects for a resolution by having someone immediately answer the call and take care of the issue in a responsible, torah and Jewish like manner.

Okay, that was an LOL.  Where has this guy been like for what, a gazillion menu years?  There is a purgatory specifically designed for phone menu systems which lasts several hundred years for people that have frivolously committed suicide or have enjoyed disco music in the 80’s. The two are definitely equivalent, I’m sure.

Here’s the deal. You can only call a large corporation and first of all they pretend to be very interested in your problem by having a computer repeat pet phrases like “your call is very important to us, listen to our **&&(& menu” and in your security by sending you through a very large maze of telephonic menus and robo security messages asking you to type in 50 digit account numbers, ssn numbers, dsl numbers — just about anything the time wasting corp menu telerobo can think of. Many menu questions are very difficult to understand, and heaven forbid you punch the wrong button, then you are summarily dismissed from the system with some agonizing phrase, such as “sorry, we did not understand your repsonse, try again later” and click you are gone.  Generally this happens only after you have punched at least 10 buttons and have listened to about 10 stupid message menus.

And in the rare instance you do get a human, they will undoubtedly be paid minimum wage (which is about 5 cents per hour in that country)and will be both surly, short on sleep, in the wrong time zone, junked up on Ambien (because the corp provides and sells it to them at a premium) and you will be forced to attempt to understand a thick accent because this corp convinced you this is fair trade when it fact it is just the sweat shop you suspected all along.

The human you get will be trained to respond to all your concerns with pet phrases, and they will try to convince you nothing can in fact be done about your error on your bill (because itis 99% always in the corp’s favor) and you should just get on with your life.  You will not be able to email, fax or write any human.  If you do, no one will respond. Oh, you can threaten to sue, but if you live in any major city just expect that if you do not have a team of skilled lawyers, the corp has paid off the judges and your case will take forever.  Most likely you will lose because the court room was wired by the corp lawyers and you will have to appeal and wait years.

Hmm, did I read all that in this article.

The torah is short and I don’t recall that in there.  Must be in another text.

Oh right, the text of the school of hard knocks.