Today, I'm focusing on one fairly common type of customer: the ones who do not have email addresses by conscious, deliberate choice. This choice reflects their displeasure in having to learn how to operate a computer interface, much like the resentment a lot of people feel about having to learn a new language. I, too was annoyed back in the seventies when they were pushing the metric system on Americans. "Why should I change, the system we have works just fine. Let the Europeans adopt our system, instead!" was how my thinking went, and I should point out that I was in my late teens during the seventies. Although nearly all the people who eschew email are older folks, in their sixties and up, this psychological phenomenon of avoiding unpleasant, albeit necessary tasks is common to us all. I believe no one likes to admit this openly-fuck email, I ain't got the time to figure it out-because it makes them seem weak, or even ridiculous to others. Instead, they summon the fog of arrogance and self-satisfaction (smugness in the extreme) and demand that I, the serf, send them a confirmation letter via snail mail. I can not exaggerate how nearly insufferable these folks are, because in essence they are demanding that the company I represent pay for their refusal to learn how to use email. Sending out letters via snail mail (what used to be called just "the mail", or the "US Postal Service") is costly, in time, labor and materials. I believe that some companies are willing to make this effort for their technology-adverse customers, and I'm sure no one at my company wants to alienate them, and lose their business. So, how do you deal with customers who demand x, which is possible only if they have an email address, and impossible otherwise? What if your company doesn't have the means to send via snail mail? It's fairly easy, albeit annoying in itself: sympathize and empathize, and offer to help them set one up, anyway? Any effort on my part to lecture them on their Luddite stupidity-or, appeal to reason- will only make them double down. They're stubborn people who simply think they have better use of their precious time than learning email, a new language or measuring system, et al. It's not that they're bad people. It's that they're set in their ways, and will not knuckle under any sort of pressure to conform. I understand this attitude, and admire it to some extent, although I can not endorse it while I am working. Learn how to pick your battles, people. I distrust the way technology has made us all dependent on the devices out there. If you think not, wait until you lose your smart phone and have to collect a paycheck or two to replace it. I understand where you're coming from, but let me ask you, is this a battle worth fighting? Because everywhere you go, people resist you, hinder you and even ridicule you. Not because you eschew email, nor even because you're just lazy, but because you demand that people-the world-cater to your irrational refusal to use email. Or any tech that actually improves your life. So carry on, you folks who hate technology, but know this: what you refuse to see only gets bigger and bigger. It only becomes more of a problem, until you confront it and overcome it.
