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‘It’s on the website.’ How the internet made retail staff ignorant

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“It was that ‘don’t know’ that really got me,” Edith told me. “We’ve now got to the point, apparently, where the humans in charge don’t know anything. The machines do. Really, not even to know how much you are charging for a service you are trying to sell seems to be to be beyond barking.”

That would be barking as in barking mad. (Edith is English, in case you hadn’t guessed.)

Perhaps you’ll conclude that Edith is simply a little too stuck in her ways. Why couldn’t she just book online like everyone else does? Hasn’t she heard of Amazon?

She, though, says that there are two million people in the UK who don’t have the internet and don’t want it, so she suggested something different to the hotel.

“I proposed sending a letter. Woo-hoo, that produced a long silence,” she said. “‘A letter?’ ‘Yes, with details of my request and payment.’ This was very reluctantly conceded. I plan sealing wax.”

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In both cases, the retailers could have simply offered plain old customer service. Instead, they chose to treat Edith as if she was a relic from a peculiar age in which human-to-human interaction was expected to be fruitful.

I tried explaining to Edith that the world was now a better place. Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the rest had repeatedly told us so.

“Pish,” she replied.

‘It’s on the website.’ How the internet made retail staff ignorant

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