Has anyone else noticed how every single service call you make now has a (I suspect permanent) voice message saying "we are experiencing higher call volume than normal". If volumes are continuously higher than normal, then they're are the "new normal" and companies must adjust accordingly. (Edit: I see this is in fact mentioned later in the article; hadn't gotten that far yet).
> More and more consumers are being pushed away from humans onto automated systems we are told will “save us time,” but instead exist solely to save the corporation labor costs. ... The waiter hasn’t been replaced by an iPad, they’ve been replaced by you.
When faced with an automated system I always just press 0 continuously in the hope that it will break the cycle and get me through to a human rather than wade through their garbage system and answer a bunch of prompts only to have to repeat it all again when I finally get to an actual human (since I have yet to find one of those automated systems actually able to solve my query).