
As someone who struggles repeatedly with new software programs and inputting data into complicated worksheets or matrixes, I am often confounded and stressed about keeping up. When you’re baffled, you’re not productive. I can’t be the only person feeling this way.
Recently, for example, my wife and I went through the COBRA health insurance extension exercise. If you’ve never gone through this experience, I hope you don’t have to. Beyond taking a financial hit in your shorts because you must now cover your entire premium, you also have to deal with an outsourcing company that handles your benefits.
Without going into the boring details, this of course means inputting your data to a password protected web site, selecting options, making sure you’re paying on time, connecting the payment systems with your bank, among other assorted decisions. After initially getting set up, we twice had to change coverage, once to drop one of our kids, then again to change coverage, all of which added to the “driving you nuts” equation. Where’s that robot the world has talked about to take care of these tasks?
Reaching the elder stage of life, I’m also now exploring social security benefits and Medicare. Yippeeee! Actually, the process hasn’t been that bad when it comes to your puzzlement at figuring out how to set up your benefits. I will only say this: get someone who has been through the process to help you with it. That, or find that robot.
After COBRA-ing earlier this year, we switched over to my wife’s insurance. Though I can’t rant about this experience, I got to overhear her as she spent several hours on the phone and online trying to get all our benefits accurately signed up for and established. God forbid we might face a gap in coverage, and of course that’s when you’d have a car accident and need to go to the hospital. That intuitive robot handling all the details sure would have been nice for my wife.
Then we get to those experiences we enjoy, but that still lend a degree of unexpected challenge to your life. I referee basketball. To keep your schedule up-to-date, we use a system called Arbiter. It’s great. Seriously. But you also find yourself pulling your hair out keeping with your schedule accurate and timely, the days you can’t work, making sure you don’t get assigned on a day you’re on vacation.
The intuitive robot sure would have been nice to add when I first went online to download the program. That took multiple attempts just to set up a password accurately. From there, it’s not too bad once you get the feel for it.
Still, three hours of my time later, I had my fall and winter available dates inputted, and the games I’d accepted to officiate this year inputted. And that’s just to start the season.
We live in a world that challenges to understand quickly and INTUITIVELY multiple software programs, and navigate them like we’re experts, when we’re not. It’s frustrating. We all do the best we can, and some of us “get it” much more quickly than others. For the rest of us, someone please, please invent and deploy the intuitive robot for handling these functions. There’s a huge market of discombobulated individuals just waiting.