I work at a nationally-known company. I have connections in our customer service department and have listened to calls from customers whose inability to concentrate or provide the most basic information would shock you. I’m not talking about people for whom English is a second language. I’m talking about run-of-the-mill Americans who, for reasons incomprehensible:

• Cannot verify the spelling of their own children’s names.
• Have to look on their driver’s licenses to confirm their address.
• I am not making this up: when one caller was asked to confirm the spelling of his very basic English name, he paused and said he would have to check his license.
• Callers who are clearly not listening while important information is given to them only to argue later that they weren’t told.
• Callers who interrupt while being given important information in order to ask if they are going to be given the very information that was being provided.
• Don’t know the name of their banks.
• Have to call their banks in order to get their banking information.
• Can’t identify their credit card provider (Mastercard, Visa…)
• Cannot follow basic instructions to save their lives.
• Do not know the name of the company they just called.
• Callers who rattle off their social security numbers automatically even though the representative doesn’t ask for it. As opposed to…
• Callers who get upset when the representatives in our government-regulated industry have to verify their identity before releasing personal information.
• Parents, spouses, social workers, pastors, secretaries, gardeners who call on behalf of full-grown adults and expect to be provided with protected and private information about those persons, despite no authorization on file to do so. Has no one heard of HIPAA?
• The caller who was asked to verify the best telephone at which to reach him and gave his full 16-digit credit card number instead.

and the number of callers with whom the following conversation is endlessly repeated staggers the mind:

Representative: “I’m going to give you the customer service telephone number. Please let me know when you’re ready.

Caller: “I’m ready.”

Representative: “1-800…”

Caller: “Hold on! Hold on!”

Assuming the representative does not have to repeat the telephone number three or four times, after the number is given…

Caller: “What number is this to again?”

Do you want to know why call center employees don’t give out their last names? Customers are now finding phone numbers and addresses online and contacting representatives directly at home, after working hours. Some will even show up on the doorstep and scream at the representative who, not being at work, has no access to the information.

I realize that this is mere anecdotal evidence. I also realize that it is a mere sampling which may or may not demonstrate anything. However, I have listened to conversations like these for a long time and they do tend to mirror much of what we are seeing in public discourse now. Inattentiveness, impulsiveness, entitlement and, as Steve mentioned, laziness.