Tell me if this sounds familiar: You take a parcel to the crappy wee petrol station Post Office counter but it’s shut due to ‘staff shortage’. Then you try to phone your council and get a crap chat bot instead.
When you try to tax your car it’s a handling because the MOT system is crap beyond words. And your house insurance company’s customer service is now fully crapified so no one picks up.
It can be more serious than this too.
Find yourself seriously unwell and you’ll face a crap health system in collapse and a waiting list that’s years long. Complain and you’ll get a crap response months later (more on this to follow).
Oh, and the crap prescription process means half your scripts are lost. And as for the GP’s appointment system, nothing more needs to be said.
It goes on and on. Company after company, organisation after organisation.
Why This Matters
What was first known as the ‘crapification’ of apps and online tools – due to a constant strive for profit margin over customer experience – has now reached every corner of the real world.
And, let’s face it, some companies hide behind things like chatbots (instead of picking up the phone) for ‘efficiency’ reasons when there’s a fine line between greed and a genuine need to work in new ways. A very fine line.
For example, all of sudden huge companies who do have the cash for the call centres and text chat they offered pre-Covid and pre-Brexit staff shortages have plentiful excuses to hide from customers just because they can.
But so what? That’s life, eh?
Well, what if you’re a carer without a spare scrap of time, nerve or money to fight every single system you encounter in a day?
What if you’re a factory, hospitality or retail worker who can’t spend hours trying to do basic, essential stuff like contact a GP.
And how about your neighbours in their 90s even trying to even function, never mind access heath services, in this environment?
If none of these descriptions apply to you today, they might well do in the future.
And I can personally promise you, as someone in very much in the carer category, that it will drive you absolutely insane.
The Bigger Picture
This all seems to be part of a bigger UK culture (for, in the case of NI, it very much feels like a Modern Britain issue that’s made it across the sea border) where less money, rising costs, a shrunken workforce and general post-Brexit crapification has been turned inward against Britain’s own population.
And if we can go very big picture for a second, those who seek to ‘Sell The Union’ should take a break from flag-gazing to concern themselves with the fact that the UK has become a grindingly and relentlessly awful place to get very simple day to day stuff done. And, more seriously, an even worse place to access vital health support.
The Fix
To attempt to finish on a more positive note as a nod to the season, here’s a simple way many of us can help turn things around.
If you work for a business or organisation with a public face, simply do this: design accessibility for those users who struggle with access the most. You’ll be bucking the trend and every single person will be glad of it.
Because, ultimately, if you can do anything to stop crapifying access to the things we need day and daily you’ll be doing truly blesséd work.
Have a good break.
Then go forth and decrappify.
CM Johnston writes about subjects including mental health, communications, culture, identity and media.
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