B&H Photo’s site is up for browsing but doesn’t take orders on the Sabbath, not even for delayed processing. Couldn’t they have sourced some shabbos goy servers?
Shit, I’d rejoice mightily at some free gyros right about now
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One of our receptionists at a Community Centre had to sort out a bloke who turned up in tears because he’d never used a computer in his life and was now being told he had to apply on line to get benefit.
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So what you’re saying is the UI is perfectly designed for someone with a technology skillset developed in the mid to late 80’s?
Talk about damning with faint praise.
@Schmorgluck: Wow, wouldn’t it be nice to live in one of those countries instead of the US?
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And if you have panic attacks on the phone?
(This isn’t a hypothetical problem for me, I struggle to talk on the phone to anyone I don’t know.)
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If I could, I would. Fucking ESA and PIP forms are horrible, especially if one arrives just after the other has been sent off. I’m misusing DHC because opiate addiction is better than repeated suicide attempts because I can’t cope anymore.
Then use the website.
Yeah I have to take at least a day to prepare before calling anyone I don’t know, like making appointments. I think I could spontaneously call a takeout place I’d called a few times before in theory. I’ve still avoided doing so because my partner handles so much for me.
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Well, @nimelennar said
One day later, I still don’t see it. I blame dyslexia and stress from filling in welfare forms. If I had to use this page I would be stuck, and I can’t cope with phoning for help. What now?
(Yes, they might be British welfare forms, but they are still shit and designed to cheat you out of money that you might otherwise get. Can I still blame IDS for this, even though he has resigned?)
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Used to have to go to an office back when we lived in Tennessee, and yeah, getting up at 5:45 for the privilege of being 30th in line when they opened at 8:30… well, thank goodness for the internet. Of course the flip side is that now, when something goes wonky, it’s an ordeal to get a person to talk to. Latest wonkiness was the phone message saying there is a problem with the claim so you have a phone appointment tomorrow between 10-12pm, and you’d better not miss the call. It caused a lot of stress because it was after hours so we couldn’t change the appointment, and she was by this point working again and would miss the call (she got off early so it worked out in the end). I’m mentioning this because we got a letter a couple of days later informing us of that phone appointment. Great job bureaucracy!
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I’m sure it happens, but I’d disagree that the general problem is funding- I’d say it’s at least as much accountability, when you have bureaucracies that goes through many layers before reaching anyone who has to occasionally run for re-election (and when was the last time an incumbent didn’t win because someone three layers down is mediocre at managing their department. You can’t even get someone unelected when someone below them shoots people).
As far as funding goes, I think much of the problem is not hiring enough people to give good enough service- but when funds are available, first thing that happens is existing employees insist on good raises before new people get hired. So you get pretty much the same level of service, only now you’re paying more for it.
We’re basically relying on the goodness of peoples’ hearts to be good employees, which doesn’t sound like a recipe for good service.
Heh, neither my boyfriend nor I enjoy making phone calls. We argue over who is going to order pizza.
On topic, I once had to file for unemployment here in Oregon (temporary layoff at my company), and lost out on a week of benefits because I did it wrong. I went through page after page on the web site, filled in all the information, and thought I was done for the first week. But it turns out I was just starting the claim, and was supposed to fill out a whole bunch of the same stuff AGAIN in order to actually file for the first week. Aargh.
Shit man, that’s grim. I hope you get sorted. I know how awful the ESA & PIP are too. My friend receives it (well, when they haven’t fucked it up that is) for spinal problems. I worked as a support worker for someone who managed their own care package, and that was a nightmare when he moved back to Cumbria to be nearer his family. All of a sudden, things that had run perfectly smoothly were a nightmare and no one would provide any help & advice. In fact, the local authority were downright hostile. If you get any funding from the council/social services it might be worth looking into NHS Continuing Care, BTW. They’ve got a lot more money to throw round and are much more tractable than the councils tend to be.
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Just FYI: If you’re arguing over this now, you’ll really hate it when you’re both still together 25+ years later. (Not that I have that problem. 
)
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Well if you can’t use either the telephone or the web, you may be eligible for disability. I’m not sure what work you can do with neither one.
The DMV is perfectly navigable here (online, prescheduling) and the reason why taxes are so infuriating is literally because of nonstop lobbying by tax preparers to keep it complicated.
But yeah, your ideology prevents that from being thought of.
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Yeah, it for some reason still didn’t work on Chrome in Linux Mint for me. So I installed win32 chrome under WINE and that worked.
I’ll be damned if the government of all things forces me to use Windows.
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No, wiseass, I’m saying anyone with a reasonable modicum of intelligence should be able to figure out what to do.
If you live your life doing only what Clippy tells you to, then I guess you’re SOL.
I recently had to navigate this system from the employer’s side, and I think the writer has only had a tiny glimpse of the full horror of this site.
There are at least four different poorly-labelled places on the employer web site where you are sent notices from the DUA, some of them with the 10-day time limit for response. I never found a page explaining the difference between “inbox” and “correspondence,” and I’m not sure I will be able to find the page where my employer’s DUA account balance was listed ever again.
Like the write, I eventually resorted to the phone. Perhaps the true purpose of the site is to ensure full employment for the call center staff.
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