Everything's Too Complicated. Does That Mean They're Out To Get You?

For the life of me, I, like millions of people, can't understand all manners of modern life and commerce. Hospital bills. Insurance. Cable television and smart phone contracts. How to assemble furniture or whatever else I might order on line.

Why can't anyone write instructions or documents in English?  Why do they make it all so complicated?

You think she's confused? I  lose it every time
I try to read a banking or cell phone contract. Why? 

Along these lines, there was an interesting article by Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkorn last week in the Wall Street Journal talking about how simplicity would be a nice switch, but also why they're not expecting any turn toward easy anytime soon.

I found myself saying "Amen" to their article.

Part or the problem, according to Siegel and Etzkorn, is there are many choices out there. Perhaps too many. Have you seen the cereal or toothpaste aisle of a grocery store lately? And on line, it's worse. Everything is available. How do you choose?

More insidious is the verbiage we have to wade through which of course I don't trust. You know what I mean. Those smart phone contracts, again. Anything you do online.

Siegel and Etzkorn write:

"In 1980, the typical credit card contract was about 400 words long. Today, many are 20,000 words. 'Fine print' complexity costs us money in the form of hidden fees (about $900 per year for the average consumer, according to research conducted by the Ponemon Institute), denied claims and unanticipated charges ($2 billion in one year for landline phone customers, according to the Federal Communications Commission.)

To me,  anything that's excessively complex, worded in dense, incomprehensible legalese and goes on and on to me is a sign that they're trying to snow me over.

Or, as the article continues:

"Complexity is the coward's way out. But there is nothing simple about simplicity, and achieving it requires following three major principles: empathizing (by perceiving others' needs and expectations), distilling (by reducing to its essence the substance of one's offer) and clarifying (by making the offering easier to understand or use)

Good luck with any of these principles. Empathizing? Yeah, right. How many times have you struggled with a so-called customer service representative who can't or won't solve your simple problem but keeps giving you that insincere crap, "We're sorry you are experiencing problems...."

It's not the CSR's fault: They have to follow a script. Or else. And the script often does everything possible to help the company in question avoid helping any customers. Helping customers costs more. Can't have that!

And I despair at any chance of companies distilling and clarifying the verbiage they put out there. Have you checked your cell phone contract lately?

Siegel and Etzkorn are a bit optimistic about a resurgence of simplicity, citing outfits like Trader Joe's and to an extent, Google, for making things a bit more clear and a bit less overwhelming.  Outfits like the Pew Charitable Trust are working on simplified model documents that explain things like banking fees, that several large banks are interested in, the pair report.

I still wonder if the banks are THAT interested in simplified documents, but we'll see.

Now I have to go, and spend the rest of the day trying to figure out some tax documents that I know would take an advanced CPA days to figure out. Sigh.

Road Rage Incident Exasperating, Then You Learn A Sad Backstory

A video going viral shows a Marine near Camp Pendleton going absolutely bonkers with rage following a fender bender on a highway.

A still from the Marine road rage incident shows
the Marine outside the car while the victim/driver
sits stone faced in the vehicle.

As people sit silently in the car that rear ended the Marine vehicle, you see the Marine just totally losing his shit.

News reports from ABC 10 out of San Diego indicate the Marine might have caused the crash by slamming on his brakes abruptly in the early stages of the road rage incident.

At first, you think, "What a moron." as he goes on and on. But there's something off, even more so than you'd see in a standard issue adult temper tantrum. His voice rises. Amid his rage, you feel like he's going to cry, that maybe there's an element of fear in his incoherent anger.

The television station also reported the Marine might have PTSD. ABC 10 interviewed Psychologist Dr. Michael Mantell, who said he thought the Marine might have something called "intermittent explosive disorder."

"It's where you have these explosive, unpremeditated outburts of anger Mantell told 10News. "These are people who thrown things, they break things, they inflict harm on others.
......PTSD is never a defense or an excuse said Mantell. It may be an explanation."

Meanwhile, the unnamed, unseen woman in the car videoing this display is herself a Marine, injured in war, paralyzed from the waist down, according to media reports. The guy behind the wheel is her brother and caregiver.

The angry Marine, a Sargeant, has been charged by military police with communicating a threat, and more charges are possible, according to local media.

I was torn about showing all this because maybe it's a little exploitive. But boy, if any of what ABC 10 has been reporting about the people involved, it's clear the damage from war reaches far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan and lands on our doorstep in scary, unpredictable and sad ways.

Here's the video
 

I Love Those Heartwarming Animal Videos

I was just struck by the video I'm putting in this post of a mother elephant saving her offspring from drowning in a water hole at Kruger National Park in South Africa.

You'd expect nothing less from a mother of any species to protect her young, so in that sense the video is unremarkable.

But there's always something heartwarming in the scenes like this one, involving the elephants. And it goes beyond the sense of drama:

Will the baby elephant be saved? What happens when the mother gets stuck and in a bad position?

I think we're all drawn to selfless acts, be they the instinct or love between animals, or the same thing between humans. Maybe we like the animal incidents a little better, because we know the motivation is less complicated than in humans

Anyway, here's the video:

"Suspended Coffee" To Treat Needy People Bad Idea, Says Consumerist

One of the latest crazes on Facebook is a story about "Suspended Coffee:"

How that works is, people go into a coffee shop and order maybe two coffees, "one for me, one suspended."

Nice idea, but some say the "suspended
coffee" movement is misguided

The customer pays for both coffees, and later, a person without money theoretically comes in to get their free coffee.

The customer feels good for being charitable, the coffee shop personnel feel good about helping others with free coffee and the needy person feels good for getting free coffee.

I can't criticize the idea behind Suspended Coffees. It's a really nice gesture.

However, Consumerist throws cold coffee water on this seemingly nice, giving idea, however.

It all goes to prove that being nice to strangers, to anybody, is more complicated than we want it to be, or even think about.

First of all, says Consumerist, "suspended coffee" is mostly a creature of Facebook. Many homeless or low income people aren't on Facebook. So the people who aren't on social media get left out of all the help, because many of these people don't even know to ask for their "suspended coffee"

Second, Consumerist asks, is this idea means tested? What's to stop somebody who can well afford a whole coffee plantation, much less one cup of coffee, from coming in and asking for a free "suspended coffee"?

Consumerists also points out coffee isn't particularly nutritious. Plus, they ask, isn't it nicer to just show up at a food pantry or something to volunteer and have actual contact with the people seeking help?

A British coffee shop owner also blogged about suspended coffee being a bad idea.

First of all, if somebody staggered into a coffee shop desperately poor, freezing cold and starving, the owner would give away a warm drink to that person whether or not somebody already paid for a suspended coffee.

Small, independent local coffee shops often already give back to the community without well meaning but flashy campaigns like suspended coffee.

And, says the blogger, there's a chance an unscrupulous coffee shop owner could take money from people buying "suspended coffee" then just pocket the money without giving anything away.

So, if you want to help a poor person out in the street, you're just going to have to deal with him or her directly.

Ronan The Sea Lion Gets Down!

Here's a fun video I found of a sea lion in California which knows how to get down to some hot, OK, not so hot dance music.

Scientists thought that only humans and some parrots, both of which can do audio mimickry, had the ability to keep the beat to music. But Ronan the sea lion proves otherwise, and she seems to have fun with the music.

At least I hope so. Subjecting poor Ronan to the song "Boogie Wonderland" seems to skirt dangerously close to animal abuse in my view.

In any event, the video is fun, so go ahead and watch:

Fun and Cringe Worthy: People Who Can't Park

I'm going to brag a bit. I can park in pretty tight places, despite the fact I drive an extended cab Toyota Tacoma.

I've even been applauded by passersby for parallel parking in a very tight space without hitting anything or anyone, having to try numerous times to make it work, and positioning the truck so it's not at some weird angle.

I say this because not everyone is great at parking, and I'm certainly not perfect. It's fun to watch people struggle, as do the makers of this video from HuffPost, who compiled some examples of people who really don't have much of a knack for parking.

Here's the video for a quick laugh for you today:

Calling Out the Dogs On Criminals, Or At Least Faking It

Say you're a member of a police agency, and you have some criminals, some really bad guys holed up in an apartment building.

No attack dog available? Fake it by getting cops to
bark and growl.  

One way to flush the bad guys out of the building is to send in the vicious, snarling barking police dogs, or at least let the criminals hear them.

Even the worst of the bad guys don't want to get mauled by a dog as if  they were bacon-smothered chew toys.

What if your police dogs were unavailable? What if they're busy working another crime somewhere and can't be brought to the scene of the guys holed up in the apartment building? What do you do then?

If you are part of the New Haven, Connecticut police department, you have your officers bark and howl like dogs outside the place where the bad guys are holed up., according to television station WFSB.

Hey, don't laugh. The ploy worked. Two suspects were arrested and taken into custoery without incident.

I wonder if many police departments train their officers to act, or at least sound like dogs when the situation warrants?