...and leave. There are many places in the world where these problems don't exist. Most of them are about a 30 minute drive east of where you live now.
you've stayed in a city that's growing -- in density. that includes people, companies, buildings, as well as laws, cameras, crime, and traffic, and pollution, and dirt, and homeless, and tax.
30 minutes east, you'll find the number of people that your city had thirty years ago. you'll find even fewer cameras. you'll find that the city's laws don't exist or aren't enforced. you'll find plenty of internet, movies, groceries, neighbours, schools, hospitals, and -- get this -- roads. you'll find much less traffic. you'll find your mortgage less than half of what it was, and your home twice as big. you'll find less competition for jobs, less expensive service for everything, and even gas will be 3% cheaper (I haven't figured out why though).
and you can still always drive back into the city in 30 minutes. oh yeah, and the train is express, and is likely faster than your current commute anyway.
enjoy sharing your city life with a few million people and those who regulate them. life's a lot better with 95% fewer humans. you get more life.
I've had no trouble refuting your arguments. You're certainly right about a cute little nickname. But a consistent alias that represents you globally across time means that you can't abandon your arguments later. Anonymous means you can. Anonymous means you don't stand beside your arguments.
I'm not lying about the $200'000. I own a business, and spend over $40'000 annually on U.S. suppliers. I also organize a car club of 150 members, planning trips for the group. Each trip typically has members spending $1'000 per person including gas and food. Easy math dude.
In December, I cancelled the trips to the U.S., directing them elsewhere instead -- to peaceful places without any terrorism in their entire history.
In January, I contracted new suppliers for my business, to replace the U.S. ones. By the end of June, I'll have transitioned 80% of my business. By the end of the calendar year, 100%.
Welcome to consequences. Your country has serious problems, and you aren't solving any of them. Not housing, not education, not science, not deficit, not violence, and not death in your streets. You don't deserve my support, and you won't be getting my money.
What have you done to improve the situation in your country? I'm saying that it's reached the point where it's your responsibility. Either fix it or leave. It's simply no longer acceptable. You've literally got children being torn apart in the streets. Whatever you've done hasn't worked.
I imagine that I'm not the last one to pull out of supporting your failing economy. You can decide how many people, or dollars, it'll take before you decide that people like me matter. But judging by what I've seen you do recently, I presume you'll just let your country go down the drain until there's nothing left. You already don't have any money left. I wonder what's next.
You mis-understand. I don't live in your country. And I have zero intent to do so. Your economy isn't exactly the greatest now, and you're about to lose my business dollars and my tourism dollars. I'm responsible for approximately $200'000 annual dollars into your country. And I'm taking them away from you. You don't know how to read -- which is a different problem in your country. I'm currently purchasing your product. And this will be the last year that I do.
And like I said, not the middle east. There are certainly worse places to live. And there are many way better places. How can you possibly tolerate this? How many times in the last year has your news network spent days covering a single violent event? It's time to leave. Clearly you can't solve the problem.
And you may want to not be anonymous when you make an argument. They carries no weight if you won't admin to stating them.
I said this in December, I'm saying it again. I'm pulling out. I'm pulling out all of my money, my business, and my plans from your country. You simply don't deserve my money.
Once again, "we'll find out who did this, and we'll bring them to justice.".
You seem to be satisfied by prosecuting terrorists. Congrats. Your people die, and you win afterwards.
This isn't a security issue. It isn't a safety issue.
This is a social, cultural, economic, political, or financial issue. And you aren't bothering to even try to solve it.
I don't need you. And I'm not interested in your business anymore. Quite frankly, I spent all weekend working on a really tough, really expensive project. And if I find out that my client's customer is among the dead in boston, I'll be very upset when they don't pay my bill.
I can't imagine how many of my hard earned dollars that I've spent on U.S. products and services wind up turning into tax dollars to fund your emergency services and bomb clean-up crews. It's really not worth it to me.
In december, I asked you how many children need to die before you decide that things need to change. And you didn't do anything, didn't change any laws, and seem to have totally forgotten. So now I'm going to ask a new question.
What needs to happen before you decide that your country just doesn't deserve to have you any more. What needs to happen before you decide to leave. What will happen before you spin the globe and pick a beautiful part of the world where no terrorist attacks, international or domestic, have EVER happened? When will you move?
You don't deserve my money any more. I realize that now. I'm not sure that you ever did.
If you can comfortably program something semi-decent in C/C++, Perl and JavaScript, then you've got the skills to learn any modern programming language within two days. That should be your aim. Forget about "having contingencies". You don't need them. You need to be able to learn them quickly. That'll do. As a programmer, you're able to learn. That's the skill you have. That's the skill you'd need. Add an older language, like assembler, or fortran, and there's no programming language that you won't be able to learn in a single day, and master in a single month.
If you're not actually working with the old e-mails, and you don't mind waiting a few moments to search them, just keep the raw e-mails, in raw transmissible e-mail format, and be done.
They are nothing more than a whack of text files at that point. And they are properly formatted with headers and everything.
Want to seach? Full text search and you're done. Want to search by subject only" Simple regex search/^Subject\:.*?cucumber/ finds "cucumber" only on the subject line (yeah yeah, header folding exists, this isn't a regex lesson).
Every e-mail client from the birth of the first one until the death of the last one support raw e-mail formats. And you can probably just pipe them all to sendmail and send them all again.
All of that said, I'm a big proponent of forgetting the past. Hoarding is consistent with many psychological problems.
Ok, here's the story. I was on vacation. I'd never been to white castle. I'd heard wonderful tasty things. So I found one, and I drove out to it. I ordered a couple burgers and a couple chicken burgers.
What I received was neither. I received a bun over-steamed to the point where it was practically a fluid, with a patty that was nothing but paste, basically spread on. the chicken, if it was actually chicken, was the worst piece of chicken I could have imagined. None of it tasted like anything but pasty salt.
It took fewer than 15 minutes to pass through me. They weren't a fun 15 minutes either.
So now I forbid my friends from ever trying white castle -- just to ensure that they never blame me for not warning them.
Worst part is that is was my own fault. Not only is it inexpensive, but it can't possibly cover the cost of real meat. Which makes sense, because it's not meaty at all. Back in university, we had a road-kill burger joint. If you really wanted to save money, and you wanted real meat, and you didn't care what kind of meat nor how it was killed, that's where you went for the cheapest burgers possible. And they were still more expensive than white castle.
Yeah, realism, reality, experience, ROI, cost-benefit, risk-reward, and statistics are a straw-man argument. Good one.
You work your way. I'll work mine. I'm happy with mine. If you're happy with yours, so much the better. A few observations though.
a) you don't put your name alongside your argument. So neither is worth spit.
b) The original poster asked for advice. I gave mine. I've not asked for your advice. I don't want it. And yet, you've decided not only to advise me, but to do so with vulgarities. So, once again, yours are not worth spit.
Enjoy fencing in -- or I guess you'd build a ten-foot stone wall -- a six acre field to keep out trespassers who only want to camp on your land. Have fun with that.
I won't let you cross the line between the safety and security of my life, and that of my business.
My life is my own, for my own pleasure and desires.
My business isn't for anything but profit. You improve my life by safe-guarding my sleep and my couch. You cost me profits when you add security efforts to my business. The sole purpose of my business is for me to profit. Taking that away isn't improving the business, it isn't even limiting the business; it's completely eliminating the purpose of the business in the first place.
If you drug me in my sleep, you remove my ability to escape from a fire, protect my property or my family.
If you infest my web server, and use it for your own purposes, without affecting my business, then you simply have me paying for your benefit. I don't want to do so, but it's business -- stopping you costs money. If that's unused capacity, then stopping you costs more than leaving you be.
But, that's exactly the point. If I don't notice it, then it didn't hurt me. Why would I spend one penny or one minute trying to respond to something that has zero impact on me?
(: wow you aren't the first to say that. And really, no, not at all. I would never seek to limit myself to the standard set by the average. That said, why do you ask?
Then maybe I'm a lot different. I'd also take my business elsewhere if I weren't happy, but I've got a rather unusual cellphone plan -- the kind of unusual that comes with wanting something weird and knowing how to get it. I'm really happy with the actual service, and I'm happy with the effort required by me -- nothing. So if I'm unhappy with my bill, then that's really not a big deal; that can be fixed.
In my case, last year, I needed a weird plan. I needed unlimited long distance between two cities that are 50km apart. That doesn't exist in this part of the world. But I moved from one of those to the other, and all of my calls would be going both ways, so I couldn't get around it. In the end, I wanted 3'000 daytime minutes. Which just doesn't exist by any carrier around here.
And unlimited doesn't exist as long distance here.
With that day, and that week, I got exactly what I wanted. 3'000 daytime, outbound, off-network minutes, unlimited national long distance, and unlimited evenings from 6pm, weekends, and incoming. And it's the price that I wanted to spend.
I can't complain at all. I asked for a solution, they composed a custom package/plan for me. The fact that it took a week and not an hour doesn't impact me at all.
I'll add something more, also along your same lines.
It's ok to be really upset about your problem. Just not upset at the person on the phone. I've always found it beneficially disarming, when they ask "how are you today" to respond with "I'm actually really upset and angry, I just spent the morning fighting with someone, and my blood is still boiling, so please disregard any tone I have, it's not directed at you" -- and I say it with some humour and a chuckle.
It helps them to realize -- and me to remember -- that I'm not upset with Shelly, I'm upset with my bill/carrier, and Shelly's the one who's able to make it all better.
You'll notice no change in them. And you'll notice more stress in you.
You speak as though yours is a new idea. Like you're the first to think of it. Like it hasn't been tried for thirty years. Maybe you'll change it all. Let me know when you do.
The first step is being patient and asking people to solve your problems nicely. After that, and only after that, the $200 is purely to further reduce what little stress remains. It winds up averaging $125, but you budget $200 for the fluctuations year over year.
As your the $1'000 on the girl, that's meant to be over and above what you actually want to spend. That said, I had originally typed $3'000, but then I realized that I'd said "love of your life" not "girl". And when I averaged what men spend on women, with what women spend on men, well, $3'000 became $1'000.
Or are you saying that your girl is not only low maintenance, but she actually spends enough money on you to take you to white castle for dinner?
And while we're here, I need to say, I went to white castle once in my life. I found myself wishing that my life was over. I'll never go back. And now, not only do I tell my friends that they shouldn't go, I order them and insist and forbid them to ever go.
Yeah, someone else pointed out my mis-type. Not once a month every month. Not once a quarter every quarter. Just no more than once in a month and no more than once in a quarter. In five years, I've gone to a store four times, and called eight times. So that averages once every five months. And that's mobile phone, home telephone, home internet, and home television.
Whether or not it's still more than it should be, it's a reason to kick back once in a while. I simply refuse to complain about spending one hour every five months.
No no, you've skipped to the advanced lesson. You need to start with the beginner's lesson. The beginner's lesson is what you want. That's the no-cost, fix all charges lesson.
After you've mastered that, only then is the advanced lesson an improvement to your lifestyle. The advanced lesson is all about wasting money in order to reduce stress. That's not for you yet.
Why would you replicate my entire post? It's available without your duplication.
#1. I stated elsewhere, it's been about 12 times over the last 5 years. It's not once a month every month. It's not once a quarter every quarter. It's just never more than once in a month or once in a quarter. It's still more than it should be, but it doesn't cost me any money, and it costs me very little time.
#2. The "business account" affords me some respect in three ways. It has human beings believe me when I say that I need to leave for a meeting. It has human beings believe that I'll actually follow through with any promises I make. And it has them treating me like someone willing to spend money, not someone trying to save a dime. So in the end, even if none of that is true for me, or all of it is true for someone else, I get treated better by human beings.
#3. Sure it should be solved within minutes. But think resolution. I get billed once a month. It goes to my credit card. I have another month to pay that credit card. So there's absolutely no difference between 1 minute and six days.
Yes, they are incompetent. You spend the effort teaching them to be better. I'll spend less effort ignoring them.
I said. I call them, I give them a day. Then I walk into a store, start again with a manager in person, and give them a week.
Whenever I've worked in person with a human manager in a store, and give them a week to solve the problem, it's either been solved in that week, or they kindly ask me for another week and it gets solved in that second week.
Over the last five years, I've been to a store four times, and called in about eight times. I've probably spent two hours in person, one hour on hold, and two hours talking on the phone. And yeah, you're right, that covers mobile phone, home internet, home television, and home telephone.
So, five hours of my life over five years, meh. It's something to do on a nice day.
Slashdot Mirror
...and leave. There are many places in the world where these problems don't exist. Most of them are about a 30 minute drive east of where you live now.
you've stayed in a city that's growing -- in density. that includes people, companies, buildings, as well as laws, cameras, crime, and traffic, and pollution, and dirt, and homeless, and tax.
30 minutes east, you'll find the number of people that your city had thirty years ago. you'll find even fewer cameras. you'll find that the city's laws don't exist or aren't enforced. you'll find plenty of internet, movies, groceries, neighbours, schools, hospitals, and -- get this -- roads. you'll find much less traffic. you'll find your mortgage less than half of what it was, and your home twice as big. you'll find less competition for jobs, less expensive service for everything, and even gas will be 3% cheaper (I haven't figured out why though).
and you can still always drive back into the city in 30 minutes. oh yeah, and the train is express, and is likely faster than your current commute anyway.
enjoy sharing your city life with a few million people and those who regulate them. life's a lot better with 95% fewer humans. you get more life.
cool that an entire county can offset my sanctions. cooler that it only offsets me and 20'000 like me. even cooler that 90% of wind lose money.
but coolest of all? you don't realize that's a loan, to be paid back eventually. now you're another 2 billion dollars in debt. smooth move.
I've had no trouble refuting your arguments. You're certainly right about a cute little nickname. But a consistent alias that represents you globally across time means that you can't abandon your arguments later. Anonymous means you can. Anonymous means you don't stand beside your arguments.
I'm not lying about the $200'000. I own a business, and spend over $40'000 annually on U.S. suppliers. I also organize a car club of 150 members, planning trips for the group. Each trip typically has members spending $1'000 per person including gas and food. Easy math dude.
In December, I cancelled the trips to the U.S., directing them elsewhere instead -- to peaceful places without any terrorism in their entire history.
In January, I contracted new suppliers for my business, to replace the U.S. ones. By the end of June, I'll have transitioned 80% of my business. By the end of the calendar year, 100%.
Welcome to consequences. Your country has serious problems, and you aren't solving any of them. Not housing, not education, not science, not deficit, not violence, and not death in your streets. You don't deserve my support, and you won't be getting my money.
What have you done to improve the situation in your country? I'm saying that it's reached the point where it's your responsibility. Either fix it or leave. It's simply no longer acceptable. You've literally got children being torn apart in the streets. Whatever you've done hasn't worked.
I imagine that I'm not the last one to pull out of supporting your failing economy. You can decide how many people, or dollars, it'll take before you decide that people like me matter. But judging by what I've seen you do recently, I presume you'll just let your country go down the drain until there's nothing left. You already don't have any money left. I wonder what's next.
You mis-understand. I don't live in your country. And I have zero intent to do so. Your economy isn't exactly the greatest now, and you're about to lose my business dollars and my tourism dollars. I'm responsible for approximately $200'000 annual dollars into your country. And I'm taking them away from you. You don't know how to read -- which is a different problem in your country. I'm currently purchasing your product. And this will be the last year that I do.
And like I said, not the middle east. There are certainly worse places to live. And there are many way better places. How can you possibly tolerate this? How many times in the last year has your news network spent days covering a single violent event? It's time to leave. Clearly you can't solve the problem.
And you may want to not be anonymous when you make an argument. They carries no weight if you won't admin to stating them.
I said this in December, I'm saying it again. I'm pulling out. I'm pulling out all of my money, my business, and my plans from your country. You simply don't deserve my money.
Once again, "we'll find out who did this, and we'll bring them to justice.".
You seem to be satisfied by prosecuting terrorists. Congrats. Your people die, and you win afterwards.
This isn't a security issue. It isn't a safety issue.
This is a social, cultural, economic, political, or financial issue. And you aren't bothering to even try to solve it.
I don't need you. And I'm not interested in your business anymore. Quite frankly, I spent all weekend working on a really tough, really expensive project. And if I find out that my client's customer is among the dead in boston, I'll be very upset when they don't pay my bill.
I can't imagine how many of my hard earned dollars that I've spent on U.S. products and services wind up turning into tax dollars to fund your emergency services and bomb clean-up crews. It's really not worth it to me.
In december, I asked you how many children need to die before you decide that things need to change. And you didn't do anything, didn't change any laws, and seem to have totally forgotten. So now I'm going to ask a new question.
What needs to happen before you decide that your country just doesn't deserve to have you any more. What needs to happen before you decide to leave. What will happen before you spin the globe and pick a beautiful part of the world where no terrorist attacks, international or domestic, have EVER happened? When will you move?
You don't deserve my money any more. I realize that now. I'm not sure that you ever did.
If you can comfortably program something semi-decent in C/C++, Perl and JavaScript, then you've got the skills to learn any modern programming language within two days. That should be your aim. Forget about "having contingencies". You don't need them. You need to be able to learn them quickly. That'll do. As a programmer, you're able to learn. That's the skill you have. That's the skill you'd need. Add an older language, like assembler, or fortran, and there's no programming language that you won't be able to learn in a single day, and master in a single month.
If you're not actually working with the old e-mails, and you don't mind waiting a few moments to search them, just keep the raw e-mails, in raw transmissible e-mail format, and be done.
They are nothing more than a whack of text files at that point. And they are properly formatted with headers and everything.
Want to seach? Full text search and you're done. Want to search by subject only" Simple regex search /^Subject\:.*?cucumber/ finds "cucumber" only on the subject line (yeah yeah, header folding exists, this isn't a regex lesson).
Every e-mail client from the birth of the first one until the death of the last one support raw e-mail formats. And you can probably just pipe them all to sendmail and send them all again.
All of that said, I'm a big proponent of forgetting the past. Hoarding is consistent with many psychological problems.
Ok, here's the story. I was on vacation. I'd never been to white castle. I'd heard wonderful tasty things. So I found one, and I drove out to it. I ordered a couple burgers and a couple chicken burgers.
What I received was neither. I received a bun over-steamed to the point where it was practically a fluid, with a patty that was nothing but paste, basically spread on. the chicken, if it was actually chicken, was the worst piece of chicken I could have imagined. None of it tasted like anything but pasty salt.
It took fewer than 15 minutes to pass through me. They weren't a fun 15 minutes either.
So now I forbid my friends from ever trying white castle -- just to ensure that they never blame me for not warning them.
Worst part is that is was my own fault. Not only is it inexpensive, but it can't possibly cover the cost of real meat. Which makes sense, because it's not meaty at all. Back in university, we had a road-kill burger joint. If you really wanted to save money, and you wanted real meat, and you didn't care what kind of meat nor how it was killed, that's where you went for the cheapest burgers possible. And they were still more expensive than white castle.
Yeah, realism, reality, experience, ROI, cost-benefit, risk-reward, and statistics are a straw-man argument. Good one.
You work your way. I'll work mine. I'm happy with mine. If you're happy with yours, so much the better. A few observations though.
a) you don't put your name alongside your argument. So neither is worth spit.
b) The original poster asked for advice. I gave mine. I've not asked for your advice. I don't want it. And yet, you've decided not only to advise me, but to do so with vulgarities. So, once again, yours are not worth spit.
Enjoy fencing in -- or I guess you'd build a ten-foot stone wall -- a six acre field to keep out trespassers who only want to camp on your land. Have fun with that.
I won't let you cross the line between the safety and security of my life, and that of my business.
My life is my own, for my own pleasure and desires.
My business isn't for anything but profit. You improve my life by safe-guarding my sleep and my couch. You cost me profits when you add security efforts to my business. The sole purpose of my business is for me to profit. Taking that away isn't improving the business, it isn't even limiting the business; it's completely eliminating the purpose of the business in the first place.
If you drug me in my sleep, you remove my ability to escape from a fire, protect my property or my family.
If you infest my web server, and use it for your own purposes, without affecting my business, then you simply have me paying for your benefit. I don't want to do so, but it's business -- stopping you costs money. If that's unused capacity, then stopping you costs more than leaving you be.
Ah, my favourite argument: "If everyone does what you do. . ."
If everyone does what I do, a) is very unlikely, and b) why would you assume that nothing would drastically change as a result?
Popular Mechanics was dumb enough to say such things sixty years ago.
In fifty years, computers will be twice as powerful and ten times as big.
If computers become common, we'll run out of copper.
Yeah, because vacuum tubes will never become transistors, and copper will never become sand.
Welcome to the term "dynamics".
All that said, I'm really not worried about everyone doing what I do. Most people aren't intelligent enough to follow, let alone to lead.
But, that's exactly the point. If I don't notice it, then it didn't hurt me. Why would I spend one penny or one minute trying to respond to something that has zero impact on me?
(: wow you aren't the first to say that. And really, no, not at all. I would never seek to limit myself to the standard set by the average. That said, why do you ask?
Then maybe I'm a lot different. I'd also take my business elsewhere if I weren't happy, but I've got a rather unusual cellphone plan -- the kind of unusual that comes with wanting something weird and knowing how to get it. I'm really happy with the actual service, and I'm happy with the effort required by me -- nothing. So if I'm unhappy with my bill, then that's really not a big deal; that can be fixed.
In my case, last year, I needed a weird plan. I needed unlimited long distance between two cities that are 50km apart. That doesn't exist in this part of the world. But I moved from one of those to the other, and all of my calls would be going both ways, so I couldn't get around it. In the end, I wanted 3'000 daytime minutes. Which just doesn't exist by any carrier around here.
And unlimited doesn't exist as long distance here.
With that day, and that week, I got exactly what I wanted. 3'000 daytime, outbound, off-network minutes, unlimited national long distance, and unlimited evenings from 6pm, weekends, and incoming. And it's the price that I wanted to spend.
I can't complain at all. I asked for a solution, they composed a custom package/plan for me. The fact that it took a week and not an hour doesn't impact me at all.
I'll add something more, also along your same lines.
It's ok to be really upset about your problem. Just not upset at the person on the phone. I've always found it beneficially disarming, when they ask "how are you today" to respond with "I'm actually really upset and angry, I just spent the morning fighting with someone, and my blood is still boiling, so please disregard any tone I have, it's not directed at you" -- and I say it with some humour and a chuckle.
It helps them to realize -- and me to remember -- that I'm not upset with Shelly, I'm upset with my bill/carrier, and Shelly's the one who's able to make it all better.
You'll notice no change in them. And you'll notice more stress in you.
You speak as though yours is a new idea. Like you're the first to think of it. Like it hasn't been tried for thirty years. Maybe you'll change it all. Let me know when you do.
The first step is being patient and asking people to solve your problems nicely. After that, and only after that, the $200 is purely to further reduce what little stress remains. It winds up averaging $125, but you budget $200 for the fluctuations year over year.
As your the $1'000 on the girl, that's meant to be over and above what you actually want to spend. That said, I had originally typed $3'000, but then I realized that I'd said "love of your life" not "girl". And when I averaged what men spend on women, with what women spend on men, well, $3'000 became $1'000.
Or are you saying that your girl is not only low maintenance, but she actually spends enough money on you to take you to white castle for dinner?
And while we're here, I need to say, I went to white castle once in my life. I found myself wishing that my life was over. I'll never go back. And now, not only do I tell my friends that they shouldn't go, I order them and insist and forbid them to ever go.
wow, someone who's happy and relaxed and has managed to interact with a paid supplier. Can't possible exist.
Yeah, someone else pointed out my mis-type. Not once a month every month. Not once a quarter every quarter. Just no more than once in a month and no more than once in a quarter. In five years, I've gone to a store four times, and called eight times. So that averages once every five months. And that's mobile phone, home telephone, home internet, and home television.
Whether or not it's still more than it should be, it's a reason to kick back once in a while. I simply refuse to complain about spending one hour every five months.
No no, you've skipped to the advanced lesson. You need to start with the beginner's lesson. The beginner's lesson is what you want. That's the no-cost, fix all charges lesson.
After you've mastered that, only then is the advanced lesson an improvement to your lifestyle. The advanced lesson is all about wasting money in order to reduce stress. That's not for you yet.
Why would you replicate my entire post? It's available without your duplication.
#1. I stated elsewhere, it's been about 12 times over the last 5 years. It's not once a month every month. It's not once a quarter every quarter. It's just never more than once in a month or once in a quarter. It's still more than it should be, but it doesn't cost me any money, and it costs me very little time.
#2. The "business account" affords me some respect in three ways. It has human beings believe me when I say that I need to leave for a meeting. It has human beings believe that I'll actually follow through with any promises I make. And it has them treating me like someone willing to spend money, not someone trying to save a dime. So in the end, even if none of that is true for me, or all of it is true for someone else, I get treated better by human beings.
#3. Sure it should be solved within minutes. But think resolution. I get billed once a month. It goes to my credit card. I have another month to pay that credit card. So there's absolutely no difference between 1 minute and six days.
Yes, they are incompetent. You spend the effort teaching them to be better. I'll spend less effort ignoring them.
I said. I call them, I give them a day. Then I walk into a store, start again with a manager in person, and give them a week.
Whenever I've worked in person with a human manager in a store, and give them a week to solve the problem, it's either been solved in that week, or they kindly ask me for another week and it gets solved in that second week.
It's customary, and considered polite, to introduce yourself before joining a discussion.
If you won't put your name to your words, then neither you nor your words are worth spit.
No name, no argument. No conversation.
Over the last five years, I've been to a store four times, and called in about eight times. I've probably spent two hours in person, one hour on hold, and two hours talking on the phone. And yeah, you're right, that covers mobile phone, home internet, home television, and home telephone.
So, five hours of my life over five years, meh. It's something to do on a nice day.