Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Exercise in frustration...

The 70 km/h speed limit on KPE , the ridiculous waiting period for a doctors appointment, the ridiculous paperwork in the name of administration. What do they all have in common?

They are all, as the title suggests, an exercise in frustration. More like a heavy work out i would say. Being patient is one thing, but getting transferred around and referred to countless unrelated workstations seems to do just the otherwise.

The recent addition to this growing list would be the automated telephone answering systems in govt. agencies and some major private companies.

Thank you for calling the (e.g) property tax hot line.[ followed by a re-run of it in Chinese] .Press 1 for english, Press 2 for Chinese. [After pressing 1] For inquiries on property tax press 1, for application for tax exemption, press 2, for updates on revision of taxes press 3, this contiues till 9 i guess. By the time i spent 3 to 4 minutes listening to all the options, i would have forgotten what the first option. After choosing the option that i wanted, i had to enter my IC number before having to choose further sub choices presented to me again by the same computer generated voice. After goin through so many sub levels just to find out that there is no choice that best describes my needs, there comes the final option. To talk with operator , press 0.... Why can't they just give this option earlier? The best part, i have to spend another 5 to 10 minutes listening to horrible MIDI renditions of Tchaikovsky before the operator answers... and all my inquiries gets settled in a min.

15 mins of hanging on the phone for a 1 minute long conversation.

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