Everywhere you go, or even if you stay at home (more on that below), expediency seems to be the goal in every transaction.

And maybe that's why. EVERYTHING is transactional.

Go to the store? Transaction.

Go to Urgent Care? It's a transaction.

Eat? It's a transaction.

Everything is aimed at expediency and brevity.

Got a question about a credit card transaction? (There's that word again.) The customer service representative's JOB is measured by their CALL TIMES. And by call times, the industry means quicker call times.

Get that customer off the phone as quickly as possible. So not only is what should be a human interaction a transaction, but it's an impersonal call intended not to solve the customer's problem or answer their questions.

It's solely meant to get the customer off the phone as quicky as possible so you can do it again and again.

The BEST call center employees are the ones who take the most calls. Since every shift is a fixed length (8 shitty hours), by logical extension, more calls equal briefer calls.

We experience this every day. And maybe this is why we've become so detached from our fellow humans.

Hell, even the way we communicate with our friends is intentionally mean to be brief: Texts and Twitter (and its mostly-inbred close cousins/sisters) are meant to be brief.

(When is the last time you wrote somebody an actual letter that you stuck a stamp on and sent through the good old US PostalService? Right. Never. You can't remember. I can't remember. I don't even know what a 1st class stamp costs anymore.)

(But I finally figured out the real reason they're called “forever stamps.” It's because if you buy a pack at Costco you'll have them until the day you die. And your next of kin will have them until the day they die. And so on.)

I just experienced this transactional bullshit we call “health care.” Twice in the past 2 days.

My wife and I took our youngest to urgent care…because, you know, I guess the pandemic caused supply chain issues in the number of physicians on hand or some BS…

While WE were there HOURS, the fake doctor (yeah, not even an MD but a “physician's assistant”) did as little as she could and passed off all our concerns with “there is nothing for that. Any questions?”

To say it pissed me off would be…expedient.

THEN, just this morning, I tried to eliminate another BS session at a so-called “medical facility” by calling “Teledoc.”

Oh boy.

I won't go through the entire ordeal, but I will say this (and I bet you can sense it): The Doctor seemed to have an agenda…expediency. I could almost hear him saying to himself: “I need to get this customer off the phone as soon as possible so I can do this bullshit all over again. I LOVE MY JOB!”

As a funny note, I couldn't even set a call-back appointment until I filled out my daughter's health profile, which apparently included knowing her pediatrician's FAX number!

LOL. Why?

I wish we'd go back to the days of actual human interactions with people not so bogged down with crap that they could actually help. So that we could help one another.

I'm feeling that cabin in the woods right now. Off grid. Away from the transactional BS.

And maybe that's the entire point of all this: To drive us back to the cave where we belong?