Ch-Ch-Changes

You may remember that right before Christmas I wrote about about how much I dislike it when technology forces an upgrade on me. This occurs when companies stop making the parts and accessories for a product for no other reason than they made another version of the same thing and want you to have no other option but to buy the newer version with all its parts, accessories and service plans. From a purely business standpoint I can understand their desires, even if I think their methods are pure evil. However, more and more I am coming across an even worse kind of upgrade that I am continually forced to deal with: the unwilling upgrade. This is where you turn on a program or visit a website to discover that things have changed. You didn't ask for these changes, you didn't agree to them and you certainly didn't want them, but you have no other choice but to deal with them. **Before we go any further I want you to know I am well aware that this entire post reads like a giant #RichPeopleProblems feed on Twitter. I've made my peace with that and before you read another sentence you should as well.**

I've never had a problem with any boss I have ever had. I have always gotten along very well with the people I report to on a day-to-day basis. The people who seem to continually rub me the wrong way tend to be my boss's bosses. These are the people who parachute in every couple of weeks, make comments about how you could be doing your job better even though they aren't totally sure what your job (or your name) is and then disappear back up to their office to pretend to be busy working, completely unaware of the chaos left in their wake. This 20 minutes of annoyance only gets worse because visits like this invariably lead to memos coming down a couple weeks later letting everyone know that some system upgrades are on the way. On the surface that sounds good and for a half-second you are actually foolish enough to believe that these changes will make your job easier. The problem is that often these upgrades don't really make things any better or worse, they just make them different. It is change for the sake of change.

First off, the people who actually work with these systems are never consulted on what would make for a good upgrade. No one ever comes along with a pen and paper to say, "Hey, you deal with this every day. What changes would you like to see?" and then begins to furiously jot down all your brilliant ideas. No, instead what happens is somebody who has never been in your department creates some new programs on their own. It has all the latest code in it, making it look sleek and stylist. But because the guy who wrote the program has no idea which parts of it get the most use or should be streamlined, the new design causes the procedure which usually takes 4 steps to now take 6 and the annoying long one that took 10 steps continues to take those same annoying 10 steps. Oh, and the one thing you liked from the old program has been removed completely. But, hey, at least the thing you have to do once every three months can be accomplished with the push of just one button. [Sidebar: I'm not faulting the system designers, who probably aren't thrilled about this stuff either. It's just the way offices work. Those designers probably worked really hard on the last program and were in no hurry to write another one. I'm guessing they are just regular people who are only writing new code to look busy and not get fired.]

I'm not saying the occasional forced upgrade isn't a good thing. Humans are creatures of habit by nature and hate change, so if technology didn't pressure us to upgrade we'd all probably still be walking around with cellphones the size of bricks, listening to walk-mans and surfing with dial-up speed internet access. When you think about it like that, occasionally being pushed against your wishes isn't so bad. But even in that circumstance you still have some control over the situation, as you are the one making the decision as to when you will ultimately cave in to the technology pressure and buy a copy of "Master of Puppets" for the fourth time. I'm simply saying there is a difference between "pressuring" and "not giving a choice". When upgrades are just done without even asking you to click an "I Agree" box, that is an entirely different case. I feel that if you are going to make changes that people have no choice but to accept, you had better make sure they are changes that people want or are at least so helpful that people will begrudgingly have to admit that this is better than the old version. In short, allow me to sum this post up another way:

Dear Verizon Fios - I hate the new channel guide.
Is there any way I can go back to the old one?