Freed: There’s one thing to be mentioned for being a Josh of all trades

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A lot of you’re nonetheless responding to my column a number of weeks in the past about how a lot work we do for corporations we pay — whether or not we’re labouring as grocery store cashiers, cable-TV restore guys, self-travel brokers or Gazette supply helpers.

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You’ve written, posted or stopped me on the street to inform often-onerous tales of your individual on-line volunteer work for Fido, Vidéotron, insurance coverage companies, alarm corporations and quite a few tech companies.

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As an example, 85-year outdated Shirley wrote she has change into “Madame Repair-it” for Bell, “CRAWLING UNDER THE DESK, PLUGGING AND UNPLUGGING DEVICES, coping with modems and different devices. My palms shake, my again aches. After I’m attempting to stand up from the ground, each chair is lined up so I can cling on for expensive life.”

Provides Amy S.: “You’d assume these corporations would at the very least give us a reduction as workers.”

A number of individuals wrote about self-banking hassles, however none matched my pal S. who just lately found her once-hefty checking account was close to empty.

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She thought she’d been ripped off and was about to complain to the financial institution, however determined to verify her on-line actions first. She quickly discovered a “slight error” in a single on-line cost she had made to Hydro-Québec in her job as novice self-banking teller.

As an alternative of paying the roughly $237 she owed, she had mistakenly added two digits (she thought had been pennies) and paid Hydro about $23,000, completely draining her financial savings!

She ultimately acquired by to Hydro on the cellphone and defined issues to a service one who couldn’t assist guffawing. It turned out nobody had seen the error (and maybe by no means would have?).

However the Hydro worker teasingly requested my pal if she needed a refund, or simply an internet electrical energy credit score — for the following 23 years.

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A lot of you complained concerning the rising strain on everybody to change into self-checkout cashiers. This job might quickly change into much more irritating given a column final week in The Guardian in Britain, the place self-checkout has been round longer than right here.

The author complains that getting old British machines now have frequent glitches, so lineups are longer for those nonetheless working. After a prolonged current wait, the author requested a clerk what was fallacious with a number of shut-down machines.

“Nothing,” the clerk defined. “It’s simply we will’t have them on until considered one of us is on the market serving to individuals use them. And we’re all the time too busy for that.”

Is that this Canada’s future, too, as we get extra machines and fewer people to babysit them?

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A few of you admired my descriptions of my very own volunteer restore work for Fido and Vidéotron and wrote complimentary letters like this one:

“Pricey Josh: We’re having hassle with our garments dryer. May you please HURRY OVER this afternoon and restore it? A lot appreciated – Large Al.”

And from Robert M: “Subsequent time I’ve points with my cable TV, I’ll name you. You will have expertise and work without cost!”

No downside, guys, I’ll be by this weekend for home calls, after I end my newest Vidéotron and Fido shifts.

Amy S. was amongst those that described her exhausting labour for airways: “reserving my very own flight, reserving my very own seat, printing my very own boarding cross, checking in, placing my baggage by …”

What subsequent, she questioned, will we fly the airplane ourselves?

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It jogged my memory of a sketch in Terry Mosher’s international COVID-19 ebook, the place flight passengers have simply gotten airborne. The captain’s voice comes over the intercom saying:

“Consideration everybody. Welcome aboard! On account of COVID-19 I can be working remotely from dwelling at this time.”

A number of of you additionally wrote to level out the flip facet of at this time’s overworked, however tech-comforted world, like Fern, who agreed with the column however requested:

“Would you reasonably return to the outdated days — placing in your scarf, hat, gloves and jacket, heading to the financial institution to attend in line, getting overheated — to deposit a cheque?

Or “writing on a sheet of paper with a pen, scratching out all of the errors, then actually chopping and pasting collectively” no matter you’re writing?

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The reality is our fashionable “work” hassles are annoying however lucky ones in a world of comfort, the place we’re each prisoners and luxurious friends of Twenty first-century know-how.

At a well-liked Plateau bar-restaurant two weeks in the past, a few of us requested what drinks they served — however the waitress mentioned there have been no printed bar menus.

I didn’t see any QR codes on the desk to hook up with an internet menu, and the waitress mentioned there weren’t any. As an alternative, she informed us to seek out the restaurant on-line, then verify their web site ourselves for the bar menu.

Luckily, the restaurant’s title didn’t have too many phrases or French accents to kind, as in say, Restaurant-sans-menu-avec-des-prix-trouvés-seulement-en-ligne.

In the long run I opted for a neater, old school method of ordering a drink. I walked over to the counter, perused the liquor bottles and pointed at what I needed.

The bartender appeared stunned however gave me a drink anyway. It was the best job I’ve had in ages.

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