Complexity transforms the simple into the impossible

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Complexity transforms the simple into the impossible, Scott Adams (Dilbert) explains:

I keep getting unexplained bankcard services fees on my business checking account, somehow related to selling some of my original art a few years ago. I contacted my bank to clear it up. My bank could find no record that I ever had a merchant account with them. Nor could they find any record that I have a current checking account with them. They did acknowledge billing me for the services they say I don’t have.

Allow me to say that again: My bank can’t find any record that I have a checking account with them, searching either by my name or my account number. As I write this, it still isn’t cleared up.

In the end, it will turn out to be something simple. I probably called the Bankcard Merchant Services department instead of the Merchant Services Bankcard department, and they can only see certain types of accounts, or some such thing. I don’t think my money actually disappeared. The real problem is that the world has become so complex that simple tasks are nearly impossible.

I recently got a video switching device, professionally installed, that lets multiple televisions in the house display what is playing on, for example, a DVD player in another room. We just built our home, so we had the luxury of wiring it for that sort of function. It’s a great idea, except that when I turn on the TV in one room it sometimes randomly turns on a TV in another. A team of very smart and experienced technicians have been trying to solve that bug for a week. In the end, I’ll just live with it, or stop watching television, whichever is easier. Complexity transforms the simple into the impossible.

I went to upgrade a family member’s cell phone the other day. I knew exactly what I wanted. The store even had it in stock. Still, the transaction took 90 minutes. It had something to do with using the upgrade of one family member for the phone of another, which ended up killing the wrong phone, hosing e-mail on my BlackBerry, and a host of other issue before we got it all working. Complexity made the simple nearly impossible.

Lately I’ve been trying to get all of my insurance issues sorted out. I need about seven different types of policies for various car risks, house risks, business risks, and personal risks. So I ask my insurance guy a question, and he passes the question to the carrier, and by the time I get the answer, I forgot what I asked. Worse yet, I have three more questions. Insurance documents keep piling up on my desk. Some want payment, some want inventories, some want data, some need review, and maybe signatures. I don’t even know where to start. The complexity has overwhelmed me. So I just stare at the pile and hope a meteor doesn’t strike the house.

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