Nobody likes life admin. Those jobs like moving energy provider or insurance company in order to get a better deal while your existing provider offers huge discounts to new customers but not to you – forcing you to move.
Whatever it is, it is tedious, time consuming and an ordeal designed (deliberately – so as to make it as difficult as possible for you) to be as life-suckingly draining as it can be.
And we have no choice but to do this stuff. Many times a year. Each time feeling like we are having our face snogged off by a Dementor. All the necessary players, energy and utility companies, insurance companies, banks, local authorities, are doing it. Creating ‘systems’, which are as convoluted as possible to use, that save pennies for the provider (cumulatively racking up millions in extra profits) while the cost to their customers, in terms of time spent, is huge.
Why is my time worth nothing to these organisations?
When I practiced as a solicitor and billed clients an hourly rate of hundreds of pounds per hour my time was valuable. The clients didn’t like to pay for my time. I was expensive. But they got something from me which was greater than the cost that they were paying to me. If I succeeded in recovering a debt of £10,000 owed to them and they paid me £2,000 to do so then I was valuable to them. (And when I sent them £12,000 for the debt, because I’d recovered their costs as well, then they liked me as well!)
I am the same person. I have the same number of hours in the day whether I am at home or at work. Why should the value of my time be viewed differently depending on whether I am at work or not. There is no reason why a solicitor who’s time is valued at £300 per hour in the office should have their time outside of the office valued differently. Yet when we operate as customers our time is valued by the organisation to whom we give our business at zero. Our time is worth nothing.
Wrong.
To each of us, each hour that we are alive should be valued the same. And that value is far from worthless.
From now on I am not going to deal with any organisation or entity that does not value my time properly. No more “Your call is important to us… You are number 78 in the queue…” bullshit. If you don’t value me as a customer then I won’t deal with you.
And we need to work out a way of being paid for our time and our attention by these organisations that think that our time is worthless, and theirs to take without recognition or recompense. When we do, we will see value in the time that we spend dealing with this shit. But not before.
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