Hey guys, it's Jen.
I just wanted to take a minute to talk about being wrong according to the information that somebody else has, but you know that there is a gap in communication and you know that you're right, but you don't know how.
I am part of a transit fare program that basically gives me free rides. And those passes can be loaded online. The problem is, when I was trying to load them from my phone, I couldn't find the option on the website. And so I emailed after like a month of being unable to access my passes, maybe two, I emailed and I was like, Hey, I'm having a problem accessing my passes.
And they said, Oh, I'm sorry, we've been updating the system. You should be able to do it now. Okay.
But again, when I go through the drop down list on my phone, there is no pass option that is specifically assigned to us. And I say, please just tell me where this pass option is. Just can you please give me direct instructions? Because I feel like an idiot, like I've done this before. And for some reason, I can't do it anymore.
And after a few back-and-forths, I could tell that the customer service rep was really being tested by my seeming ignorance or lack of ability to load a pass onto a bus card. And I said to them, even, I'm only 40, and this is so hard. And I don't know why it is so hard. I am only 40. I literally used to design websites for a living, and I don't know what the fuck this is all about. And by the end of it, they closed out their correspondence with me with just a PDF of the instructions for how to load the passes from the website.
Okay, fine.
So I go online— I pull out my laptop and I go online, and it works! I followed the PDF instructions, and it works. Great, I have my pass. A month passes and it's time to renew my pass. I go on my phone again to go to the website…
And the option is not there! And I'm like, okay, I just did this. Like I just, I'm having the same crazy-making processes in my head. I know this option is somewhere, I just don't know where.
I’m going and searching through my email for the old instructions, thinking it's just me, and it's definitely that I have to follow these very specific instructions in order to load this pass onto my card.
And of course, like any large city transit agency does, they also have an app where you can also load your pass information. Unfortunately, my phone is so old that I can't download the app.
I actually have two phones. I use a beater phone when I'm out in public, and then I have this very nice one that folds and is made of glass and I'm terrified it's going to crack, so I keep it at home. I don't know why I did this to myself. This is the most expensive fear I've ever given myself. So I keep my nice phone at home for recording and things. And I bring my beater out in public that I've dropped on the ground, kicked across traffic. Cool, it's an old phone.
But the thing is, it's so old that you can't load the app. And the website is miscoded, so that when you pull up the drop down menus, there is no option for such a thing. Because the website coding to this specific age of device is wrong or old or incorrect or it just doesn't work, the same way that the app doesn't work, for this phone. I used my computer and I found the option on the drop down menu. And then I used my fancy phone, and I found the option in the app. So I know that there is a gap in coding for this generation of Android device.
And so, I sent them an email with screenshots. And I said, Hey, following up… Our last correspondence, I sounded like an asshole and I'm sorry, but here's the screenshots for the error that I was talking about. Here's the screenshots for the issue where the pass just doesn't show up on the list.
And I also said, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the people who are using this pass system have old phones, have old Androids. They don't have the latest version of an Apple. I'm pretty sure. So you might want to fix this gap because either the app needs to work or the website needs to work but you're missing information, and so therefore this is not an accessible program, specifically to the people that you're targeting. And of course I didn't hear back, which is fine. I hope they fix it, or update their system.
But it sure fucking feels good to be right, after feeling so fucking crazy and having to do the shit twice, and feeling crazy fucking twice, thinking that you're doing something wrong— having somebody else think that you're doing something wrong is the worst part of it. So, I'm just glad that I fucking found that.
So if you are ever wrong, but you're pretty sure that you're right. Don't worry about being wrong until you can prove yourself wrong. I really can't tie in any philosophy here. I'm really trying to, there's got to be some kind of life lesson in this, because this happens to me so much. I guess the more important message or lesson here would be that, when somebody is frustrating you on a conversational level, and you think that they're an idiot, consider that they must be missing some kind of information that would make them not an idiot. How about that?
So, from that angle, be the other guy, be the customer service person who is emailing me and reach the final point of not caring whether or not there was any information that I'm missing. That's not fair to say that they didn't care. But they didn't know… that they didn't care. Because they didn't know to care about it, because they didn't know the gap was there.
Just maybe be aware that there are gaps.
But it sure fucking feels good to be right.
[~*guitar solo*~]
