A local writer wrote that we don't make anything in America anymore, look around. Actually he didn't look around very well; there are several manufacturers in Duluth, Minnesota, and the United States, many of them doing quite well.
Another thing that many people don't look around for is counter-examples to the idea that businesses are efficient and government is not. If you look around, you'll find plenty of examples of efficiency and inefficiency for both businesses and government. Being a contrary sort, I look around for government efficiencies and corporate inefficiencies. Today I found two examples of corporate inefficiency.
We have our house, cabin, and auto insurance with Western National. I paid the auto insurance last month and even have a confirmation number. When I checked today on the statements for the house and cabin insurance, I found that the statement for the auto insurance had a pay button next to it!!!
I sent email to Western National's contact address and received a reply within a few hours. Give one point to WN in the efficiency column and another for courtesy. However, the company is unable to remove the pay button as the online system is not interactive with its other system. Duh! I paid via the online system!! Give WN five points in the inefficiency column. Oh, the respondent did say that the pay button will eventually drop off.
That was a minor annoyance. Microsoft has given me, and probably hundreds of other users of Office 2011 for the Mac, a major time consuming headache.
Once again I find that I am getting duplicate events on my Outlook calendar. Before this was apparently caused by synchronization with Apple's iCal. I turned off synchronization before I spent days and days removing the duplicates. Today Outlook gave me the spinning and spinning beach ball, Force Quit said Outlook wasn't responding, and before I could click "Force Quit", the beach ball stopped. That long pause left me with duplicate items once again. At least at the moment, there are two to ten or so duplicates for each item, not hundreds like before.
I have some sympathy for Microsoft programmers and support personnel having spent a few decades debugging software, my own and that of others. But I find it annoying that such a wide variety of problems exist for years, especially when the producers tout how much productivity they give the users of their software. Efficiency is not passing problems off on customers, or is it?
