ANOTHER VOICE murray swart Heartless efficiency

ERIK and I didn’t get off on the right foot and over the few brief weeks of our correspondence I grew to like him even less.

I get it. There are jobs out there where your daily activities comprise of dealing with customers who are so irate that any voice of logic and reason is drowned out by their personal yet involuntary need to vocalise their own frustration to someone. Sometimes, that someone is you day in and day out, hour after hour, minute after minute.

It’s a tough job but someone has to do it.

Short of friends and family, nobody was ever pleased to see a traffic cop, nor a debt collector, nor a dentist and while their efforts need to be acknowledged and appreciated, when you earn your keep by ruining someone’s day, all day, every day, even friends and family can seem few and far between.

There are just lines of work that only exist to capitalise on the shortcomings of others and are held by those looking for an outlet to oppress and overcompensate and Erik has one of them. He runs a helpdesk.

At first, I didn’t think the name-wielding but faceless individual on the other end of the e-mails was overcompensating. Maybe a little incompetent but certainly efficient.

It never dawned on me that, as accurate as this first impression may have been, Erik would prove far more capable of ruffling my feathers than any underpaid, underappreciated and underachieving figure could ever wish to be.

Like the uniformed figure hiding in the bushes, armed with a radar gun and shiny badge, with buttons and belt desperately trying to conceal a boep (and failing), Erik was the destroyer of days. One of many out there dependant on conflict for company.

Erik works for Strava’s customer care helpline but from our very first encounter to our very last it was clear that he was incapable of either caring or helping.

It started with a simple request to cancel my subscription and before I knew it, I had been caught on a perpetual loop to nowhere.

“Click here to cancel oremium,” it lied, instead sending me from pillar to post, back to pillar and more useless guidelines on how to restore my status to that of freeloader.

After clicking away like mad, performing the same task while expecting a different outcome, a brief goose chase ala Google uncovered an e-mail address “for more information” which was precisely what I was looking for.

Erik was very quick to respond but of little use and the more I asked for clear steps to follow, the more he sent me to “Click here to cancel premium”.

I was irritated, then annoyed, then pissed off, then sommer offended.

Erik thought I was an idiot and it was costing me money.

The more I clicked the more I was being mocked, so I sent an angry e-mail and got another “Click here to cancel premium” in response.

That’s when I realised that Erik was right. Very efficient, not at all human, but very right. I was an idiot.

Had I changed the way I asked the question for clarity, Erik would have helped in a heartbeat, despite the fact that he did not have one.

Sadly, I got angry and Erik didn’t care. He was only there to help.