On asking for help...

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

.. without doing any homework.

From today's New York Times article "How Many Is One
Egg Roll?".

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/opinion/covid-restaurant-business.html

Somehow this made me think of people whose immediate
impulse when looking for info is to just go on social
media and ask the planet, with a bullhorn.

  You learn a lot about human nature taking takeout
  orders.  One interesting finding is how many people
  don't read the menu before calling.  They just call
  and ask, "What do you have?"

  We also learned that the standard number of egg
  rolls in an order is not standard at all, and it
  seems to be somewhere between two and five.  We
  edited our menu to read "one egg roll," but this
  led to even more confusion. "One egg roll.  What
  is that exactly?" Also: "How many is one egg roll?"

Yet another consequence from growing up with social
media and the internet from birth?
___

The flip side of possibly the same coin is that it's
nearly impossible to get human help by telephone now.
That restaurant is a relic in this regard.  Soon they
too may go the way of automated voice-menu rabbit-hole
Hell.

Yesterday I tried to call the Post Office, fool that
I am.  After being on hold for 3 hours I finally got
through to someone, and he was totally uninformed,
uninterested, and useless.  Not that I blame him
personally.