Ask HN: Does anyone else notice increased incompetence?
For example, I've been trying to get medical records for 3 weeks and the office keeps: faxing the wrong number, faxing the wrong release forms, giving us incorrect status info, etc.
Another example is a legal matter I'm now involved with. The officer wrote the citation for the wrong statute (more serious), gave us incorrect information in how to request records, misspelled a name on the citation, and put the wrong time (by hours) on the citation. The court also gave us incorrect information on requesting records, gave us the wrong kind of subpeona and won't correct it, and the staff doesn't even know what an affidavit is.
We saw several doctors during an SVT event 48 hours after multiple simultaneous immunizations. They all said unequivocally that the events were unrelated, but could not produce data to support their opinion nor refute the thousands of arrhythmia events in VAERS data. (There's no data to concretely prove or disprove, so it's unknown). So now I have to submit ther VAERS report. Doctors like this will lead to under reporting, impacting studies on safety.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadMy wife once picked up an old traffic cone that had been abandoned in a ditch for more than 30 days. An officer wrote her a citation and she just plead guilty and mailed the fine in. She didn't realize it was for a misdemeanor when the officer was supposed to write it for a summary offense. She kept getting denied when applying for jobs and found out that was the reason. She had to get a lawyer to get it correct - at her expense. (This was long before we met)
A local police department was spreading similar misinformation on Facebook about something being a misdemeanor when it should have been a summary offense. I ended up having to get the DA involved to set them straight so they wouldn't ruin someone else's life.
How do you know that, and where do you live that the police file charges? That's typically the job of a prosecutor.
>A local police department was spreading similar misinformation on Facebook about something being a misdemeanor when it should have been a summary offense. I ended up having to get the DA involved to set them straight so they wouldn't ruin someone else's life.
Would you provide more information about the local police department and the "something?"
And how would it ruin someone's life if they thought that 'something' carried greater consequences than it actually did?
For example, if the police refer to "jaywalking" as "felony jaywalking," that doesn't actually make it a felony, nor does it mean that if someone jaywalks that they would have a felony on their record.
No?
The township police posted info stating that the new 'purple paint' law makes trespassing (defiant) an M3 when a property is posted with purple paint. In reality it only adds purple paint as an alternative to using a sign and carries the same grading as signs (summary offense). If they issue a citation under the wrong grading and someone just pleads guilty to pay the fine, then that misdemeanor can ruin their life by preventing them from passing background checks required by most 'good' jobs and would require expensive legal representation to correct it (see my previous comment on my wife's situation).
The jaywalking example isn't really the same since there is no felony grading of jaywalking. If you look at the prior example of trespassing, that could be graded as S, M3, or M1 depending on the elements of the offense. If the officer is complacent, lazy, incompetent, or malicious, then they might write your citation for the M3 grading even if you didn't meet the definition - you would have to be told in-person to leave and refuse to leave for it to be an M3.
Hire a contractor to power wash part of a house, and they simply _did not do half the work._ Not a matter of a half-assed job, simply was not even done. When called back, they proceeded to skimp in almost the same way, except when confronted over there being literal clumps of dirt still on sections they did claimed "oh I guess it just came off easier a second time."
What's absurd is like you I've experienced it in life-threatening fields as well. I'm currently contesting a rather pricy medical bill as a result of a surgery, that should be covered, when I call my insurance provider they claim should be covered, but then I... keep getting bills for. Even calling the university sending the bills, they claim it should be covered, claim they put a "note on my account" but then the bills keep coming. I've spent 12+ man hours being fed BS by a string of companies who have shown no real ability to actually rectify a glaring, financially critical issue.
It's just crazy to me how pervasive it is, even for well-reputed companies. I feel like if I was this bad at my job I'd be fired in an instant, but then I see managers in my stack whom engineers have _abysmally_ low reputations of (have had HR reports for bullying, have pushed individuals out of the company, regularly are caught in lies/misdirection) get continual promotions and praise.
There really seems to be two classes of accountability in this world, and for those jobs where there really isn't any, I get the sense it's become a race to the bottom. (Look in govt. as well. It's basically dogma that campaign promises are full-of-shit, but we continually accept them at face value/there's no recompense when they're inevitably not met.)
Yes! I look at these other jobs and think how great it would be to work in a position that had no accountability.
But the best is probably the contractor drama of several years ago. One plumber left the country and did not return. This would have been fine, except that he left a vent pipe unblocked when he removed the toilet or sink or whatever. Then we had a really cold winter and the rats found their way into the house by that route.
I think incompetence is about on the level that it has always been, but I can tell you two things I have seen change in my lifetime (45 years) which I believe make us feel the incompetence more.
1) Companies systems and processes are enshrined in software, when the software does not handle your non-sunny day scenario, the company employee does not know what to do, they punt you to someone else and you get in a loop of no one knowing how to address the issue, or no one having the authority to address the issue. This is a huge problem and many times you the consumer are just left holding the bag.
2) Companies in their never ending pursuit of profit are offloading their business processes onto the consumer. As an example, My home insurance lapsed for a brief period because they sent me an email, which went to my junk mail, in that email was a form that has to be filled out by getting information from the local fire department. Stuff like pumping capacity, hydrant geocords, etc. etc. This was a routine business form that the insurance company needs to underwrite the policy. This is something that traditionally a clerk at their underwriting department would call the local fire department get the answers, input them in the case file and be done with it. Instead, they changed their business process to offloading most of the legwork for underwriting to the consumer. I see this all the time now, in medical, legal, financing as well as a host of other industries, it was not the norm 20-30 years ago.
Maybe the stress is making them care less. "Why should I care about washing this house when the world is falling apart?"
Some of them may care more. "If I make a mistake here, I'll get fired and never find a job in 2020."
Either way, stress WILL increase the amount of mistakes done.
For example, this study saying that surgeons make up to 66% more mistakes during stressful situations. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181219191052.h...
It's daily stress, they describe it as people talking, machines beeping, etc.
Now imagine the result if you replace this daily regular stress with a fear of a pandemic, a fear of the economy crashing, a fear of the environmental crisis, etc.
People are bound to make more mistakes.
Yeah, but the lives of people that the worker who actually produces the citation/form/record/whatever will never see, doesn’t care about, and just views as an annoyance who’s making them do something.
The bigger populations and communities get, and the more remotely everyone can work, the less likely it is you’ll deal with someone who has any interest, knowledge or fucks to give about you. I’m sure if these companies had to get it right for the boss’s friend, they’d magically become competent.
It might help to see these not as opportunities to be frustrated but as opportunities to be gracious and forgiving. It’s like seeing money fall out of a stranger’s pocket: it can be an opportunity to steal or an opportunity to help.
So there's a lot of stuff I could do against people, but I'm not. I'm trying to give people the benefit of doubt or correct their mistake, but they are making it very difficult.
- People are being challenged
- Situations are rapidly changing course, and people have to adapt quickly.
- People are trying to do their jobs while worrying about their finances, or how they're going to home school their kids, or daycare, or them or their spouses losing their job.
It's fine, everyone will adapt to the new normal, whatever that ends up looking like.
And the other factor in the modern era is that everyone is overworked and / or underpaid. The motivation to do something properly is gone. I would not be surprised those jobs you mentioned are now doing 2x the workload compare to 20 to 30 years ago while earning a quality of life ( Even Money over inflation may not be a clear indicator ) that is lower than what it was 20 - 30 years ago. Comparatively Speaking.
Generally I find greater competency on average. I just accept that a person can be competent at doing something I don’t like.
Actually, the behavior premised on incompetent law enforcement is the only way to go. If you assume they are competent, then you would plead guilty because there's no way to win. Cases are routinely thrown out over incompetent actions by law enforcement. This is all a big waste if time and tax dollars when we show up and show the judge that we don't meet the elements of the offense and he dismisses the case.
I know what competent policing looks like. I have many friends who are officers and I am state licensed/trained as a armed guard. My friends and the dog warden have also said this is odd and that he wrote it up wrong. For the record the citation was supposed to be for a dog being off leash and they instead wrote it as a dangerous dog - a big screw up.
One side decides who is an equal party. The other side is you.
We aren't governed by the divine right of kings. Our system is based on limited sovereignty and trial by "combat" (truth comes from a fair fight in the courts). The Magna Carta is listed as the beginning of the evolution towards limited sovereignty - it is not the premise on which the current court system is based (it's that truth comes out during a fair fight).
I think the lazy part might be more prominent in low power positions. The specific example I have of these positions of power (LEO, court officials, healthcare) seem to let the power power go to their heads. In my opinion it seems they let that feeling of mastery lead to incompetence. I do think laziness is part of the equation that leads to that.
In the past, whatever you needed done, was done through human action even if they used machines. So there was a good chance that somewhere along the way, there would be someone who'd notice and check/fix, or at least would be able to help you when things go wrong.
But with increased automation, every mistake is amplified and carried to completion much more efficiently -- and the humans you can talk to are often minimum wage people who are not very familiar and are not authorized to modify anything about the processing stages. There are 1/100 or 1/1000 as many people who can actually help you as there were 40 years ago -- and by that I mean actually help you, that is - fix wrong data, override automated processes, etc; not just read from a script.
I'm not even that smart, but heck I have a college degree and for me I had to stop assuming others had the best of intentions and / or were as smart as I was. When you just double check and clarify when appropriate - you can avoid dumb pitfalls like this.
For instance, "Here's my bank acct number, can you confirm this is the number you are submitting for the request?" or "thank you officer, I would like to ensure we are on the same page, I understand you underlined this check box, but I'd like to have a new slip without the underline".
Interacting with morons sucks, but if you put a bit of effort into these things, in time you might avoid wasted time or anxiety.
It is tolerable most of the time, except when it comes to powerful jobs like cops/doctors/lawyers etc where even a small mistake can wreck someone's life. I had a colleague whose lawyer made a mistake while filing paperwork. He lost his visa and move back to his home country, all because a lawyer (well paid one at that) couldn't bother to do simple paper work correctly. I don't know if it was incompetence or I don't care attitude, my colleague's life is ruined either way.
I think in many cases the lawyers are overpaid. I'm doing all the legal leg work for my wife - researching case law, scrutinizing statutes, combing through code, placing calls, and talking to my LEO buddies (they think the officer made a mistake).
Curious about this. I can count on one hand the politicians I truly admire/respect, including the world leaders (among the ones I am familiar with, and I am familiar with a few). Why do you think politicians are getting better with speeches? All I see are useless, meaningless, confusing soup of words that they blabber (with few exceptions)
Suppose you are a politician bankrolled by the oil industry and you're invited to speak at a climate change conference. How do you ensure that your speak neither upset the climate change activists or your rich donors? Not easy.
Working from home is hard in my situation, and I have all the symptoms of depression yet I'm not treating them.
I expect a huge part of the population to be in the same position as I am.
Incompetence is sometimes a brilliant intelligence and counterintelligence strategy.
The old saying of "don't suspect malice when stupidity is possible" or whatever was a favorite saying of Aldrich Ames. And of course that is what one would say if they were doing what he did.
It's also a great recruitment strategy for spies. The CIA realized by the mid 70's that hey didn't have to ask ppl to defect, or to pass secrets, often they would just say, "can you make sure that if this security concern ever gets filed, you just just make sure it gets lost, or that you are really confused and don't understand?"
Incompetence happened a great deal in the Soviet Union. It mentally killed people to see it everyday. People had just given up on society and accepted a corrupt incompetent way of life. Ultimately, incompetence, even if begun as a malicious strategy, eventually inspires it in others, which is tragic.
Wasn't it result of communism? At least that's my impression after reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago".