Electricity is shooting from my fingertips. My heart is racing. My breathing fast, too fast.
“I can’t understand your accent. I’d like to talk with a supervisor, NOW!” My fifth ask.
I’m on the phone with COMCAST, have been for the last 2 hrs today; 3 hrs on Tuesday, 2 more last Friday…etc.
“I sody mem for the inconvenents,” the COMCAST operator delivers his line politely, though I’m yelling at him.
I’m yelling at him because he’s the 17th Indian employee, talking to me from India, I’ve spoken with in the last year alone, and I’ve been trying to get my internet connection stabilize, i.e. consistently ON for FOUR YEARS NOW.
“I here do help you, mem. Wvat is you account numba?” He’s lying. He doesn’t want to help me. He wants me on the line so he has a job tomorrow, because he wants to feed his family. So do Americans, but he doesn’t care about that either.
“I want to speak with a supervisor NOW, dickhead. Do you fucking understand me?” I’m getting mean. I’ve learned not to care about him, as he doesn’t care about me, or even the problem I’m having with COMCAST. He does not deserve my respect. Past experience with COMCAST customer service has taught me that he is the enemy, making sure he takes care of himself, regardless that he’s screwing the very people he’s supposed to be working for—the COMCASTcustomer.
Germans drove trains, turned in their neighbors, sent millions to slave labor and gas chambers to protect their own asses. They didn’t stand up to Nazis (AMAZON, MICROSOFT, COMCAST, PG&E, VERIZON…etc). They let the German government tell them what to do, how to think, what to say, what not to, just like COMCAST teaches their employees, Indian or otherwise.
It is insanity that COMCAST delivers HALF THE SERVICE they claim to offer, but I have to pay ALL OF MY BILL monthly. Sure, I can go with AT&T, who were just fined $18.25M for STEALING FROM THEIR CUSTOMERS, cutting internet speeds to you and me, to give more bandwidth to whoever they liked. And do you REALLY believe that AT&T will stop stealing time and hurting productivity for small businesses like yours and mine after this fine? Seriously. They’ll do what they want, get sued again, then raise their rates to pay for the lawsuits. Just like PG&E, who MURDERED 8 people in San Bruno, destroyed an entire neighborhood, was fined the most EVER in a lawsuit of its kind, and simply raised their rates to cover the suit. We’re all paying to let them get away with murder.
Is this the society you all want? It makes my skin crawl every time my husband insists on paying a bill that is wrong because COMCAST and AT&T make it a 2 hr journey of frustration to talk to an operator in India or the Philippines who has little to no training, can barely speak English, and who DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR PROBLEM. They have to feed their families, on the backs of Americans, because their governments are so corrupt that only the wealthy thrive, while the rest of their people struggle to get by. Or flat out starve, like the begging children that surround foreigners in India.
Well, now our government is equally corrupt, placating to CORPORATIONS and big business lobbyists. And WE ALL LET THEM.
My father-in-law spent between the ages of 13-18 in Auschwitz after watching his entire family murdered by Nazis. His neighbors, their kids that he used to play soccer with, all turned a blind eye. AMERICANS ARE NOW DOING THE SAME THING. We’ve become complacent, as long as we have Netflix, and Amazon, and Uber for food delivery. He told me once that anything becomes acceptable to most people, that watching Nazis murder children daily, for sport, or seeing prisoners throw themselves against electric fences to commit suicide became the norm in Auschwitz. It is now the norm to accept bad behavior from big business. And regardless of our Supreme Courts twisted decision that “Corporations are people, too,” there are actual people working for them, greedy management making decisions that screw their customers, that are at the core of this issue.
The German train drivers, or the local store owners that stopped serving Jews and Gays and Gypsies, they were simply “following orders,” like the Indian rep working for COMCAST delivering the company’s lies with every line he spoke.
Those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat it.
You can all plug into your devices and apps and ignore the news, and pretend the economy is stable for you, even though it’s a house of cards with Disney and other major employers firing U.S. workers and replacing them with H1Bs, and just bend over and pay every bill without protest. You can choose to be one of the Nazis, or the ‘good Germans’ who turned their heads while their neighbors were murdered.
Harsh? You bet. But again, is a society where the few rich thrive, and do whatever they want, whenever they want, with NO ACCOUNTABILITY, or real punishment, where you want to live?
DO THE RIGHT THING!!
Protest—tweet, update, share your stories when you are screwed by COMCAST, AT&T, PG&E. Take the time to tell the world that SAMSUNG put a ton of apps on the phone you just purchased that you don’t use, don’t want, and YOU ARE PAYING FOR in load time and battery life, while they exploit your personal data with recommendation engines to use against you. Sign petitions by people who give a shit enough to fight corruption and are looking for support to stop it, and not just causes that adversely effect you directly, but humanity, and the planet. Fight every bill that’s wrong. Don’t speak with respect to the CS reps who show you none! Their politeness is a facade, taught to them by greedy, ugly management who are happy to keep you on the line repeating the same information to the next rep who doesn’t take notes, maybe is even illiterate, and has no clue what your issue is.
Show your outrage passionately!! Make their job hard, because they are willingly stealing your time, and your income, and most assuredly making you miserable not caring about your needs to guarantee their jobs. And if you think these reps are not aware of what is happening on the back end, that’s BULLSHIT—an excuse to remain ignorant, especially since almost every call they get is from beleaguered customers like me who take them to task on COMCAST FAILING TO DELIVER on their promises. If you make it miserable to work at COMCAST, perhaps they’ll look for real jobs that require thinking, literacy, and actually add value—benefit customers—instead of blindly obeying the Nazi leadership of the COMCAST (or pick your fav corp) regime.
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