Our society is enduring a breakdown of logic, reliability and trust that is omnipresent if you just care to look.
Consider some personal examples from recent days.
Begin with the order of hats and a T-shirt mentioned previously here in an ode to the power of popup ads. The order eventually shipped from Avenel, New Jersey, where it had spent parts of two days. A recent update had the package moving to Urbancrest, Ohio, where it also has sojourned for parts of two days.
This means my package was transported from hundreds of miles to the east of my hometown, right past me and hundreds of miles to the west before, presumably, doing a U-turn and heading back to arrive on my doorstep, by 9 p.m. tomorrow if the promised delivery time is met.
Not that it will be met, or should I have any reasonable expectation of same.
What used to be taken for granted in this country, things like courteous and efficient customer service, promises kept and quality delivered either in terms of goods or services, and general honesty, no longer can be presumed.
Another example: I received an email recently from my bank that they were going to be charging for future hard copies of statements. I have three such statements I receive monthly and went online where I opted out of the first two, but kept my checking statement.
With my computer printer on the fritz still – and me too cheap to replace it – it’s easier to have a hard copy in the event of a problem.
Formerly, I had been told that since I had the old peoples’ fee-free checking account I needn’t worry about such things.
But I called customer service this morning just to make sure. After some time spent in phone tree hell, where I kept being shuttled around to listen to more and more prompts, I ended up on hold.
The estimated time given by them was 10 minutes. I’d like to have these people work for me at an hourly rate because they sure can’t tell time.
At one point, maybe 8-10 minutes into my hold time I was updated to 6-8 minutes to go. Five minutes later, it was 4-6 estimated additional hold time minutes.
Do the math. In five minutes, my estimate range reduced two minutes. I wrote down the information at the time because that’s who I am.
Eventually I got a live voice on the phone and, yes, if I wanted hard mailings in the future it would cost me $3.95. Per month? Per year? Forever? He didn’t specify, so I asked.
The answer was $3.95 a month, or about $48 a year. If this were an interest rate, the bank would be challenging usury regulations.
While on hold, I was catching up on my email and got a disturbing communique from my brother.
Our mother is in a nursing home. Formerly we each visited daily to help her with meals, etc. Since the virus over-reaction, no in-room visits have been allowed. There was a brief period of lobby meetings, limited to two visitors and with social distancing regulations strictly enforced, not to mention masks required.
But those lobby visits gave way to our dictatorial governor’s mandates to cease such things.
By the way, despite all this, our 84-year-old mother tested positive for COVID-19, but thankfully survived with no real problems.
Now we have teleconferences weekly with her, which are an adventure for numerous reasons.
Also, there are periodic conference calls with staff and supervisory personnel to discuss my mother’s situation. During our most recent call, just last week, my brother made a point to note my mother disliked being put in a wheelchair and left there for hours on end.
We got a staff member to say the wheelchair time was not necessary, that my mother could and should just say no and this supervisor would make sure the staff understood this.
Yesterday, we got a communication from a staff member who visits our mother that mom was quite unhappy about being left in the wheelchair yet again. She got help to put her back in bed.
And today my brother talked with our mother and she said that once again she’d been plopped in the wheelchair and specifically was told when she protested that the family had requested it.
I know, it sounds absurd. But it’s true.
Equally absurd was how when we still were allowed into her room that my mother’s food often showed up not pureed, as mandated, or her food trays arrived missing multiple items. At least one time there was not a single drink item on the tray, which I would characterize as an egregious omission.
This pattern of systemic breakdown goes well beyond my personal experiences. Life is becoming surreal.
We have a president that on any given day is less than a 50-50 bet to remember his name, the names of his cabinet members, or the name of important governmental divisions, such as the Department of Defense.
Former media darling, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo remains in office despite botching virus measure and, more recently, being ensnared in an increasing number of claims of sexual harassment.
Yet a Kansas football coach is forced to resign on the spot for sexual harassment allegations.
And finally, also referring to something posted here, I noted previously that it is curious how government officials pick and choose the statistics they want to cite.
For example, people in the Federal Reserve or Department of the Treasury claim the government’s unemployment figures are understated, and they use that presumption to justify their increasing money creation and overspending.
Yet these same people insist that government inflation numbers, which a large group of economists contend are understated, are just fine. This also allows the Feds to justify money creation and spending.
Signs abound that the threads that hold our society together are fraying. When they pop entirely, you would be well advised to have ample supplies of the three precious metals – gold, silver, and lead.
Sam Ross Jr's site 