Paper Pushing
A Conversation with Customer Service
You know how there’s those teachers where every story has to have a point and you should be learning something from it? I’m that dad, and I’m sure it’s a little annoying for my child. Nevertheless, he mostly indulges dear old Dad right now so I’m very appreciative of that.
The piece below is something I wrote a number of years ago. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to capture what resonates with me on this story as a preface. I initially wrote it to amuse myself, and it still does so, but it has also become a reminder of what bureaucracy can lead to — a hellscape of foisting decision-making off to someone else and strangling your own agency.
There’s some general folk wisdom that as you get older you grow more conservative. I’ve always thought it made a lot of sense because the older you get the more you have encounters like this. For me, conservative means a distrust of government and a desire to see it as small as possible. This is obviously no longer the case because, you know, gestures at everything, but it’s still what I think about when I think about the term.
My distrust of government is mostly because of the inhumanity of bureaucracy coupled with a lack of forcing functions to drive efficiency. The free market, ideally, has more forcing functions (e.g. competition) for improvement but still very much suffers from the same inhuman bureaucracy that withers agency and leads to “I’m just following the book, sir, because I’m incapable of making any decisions myself and I’ll be punished if I do.”
So this is funny to me but it’s also a cautionary tale about the incentives to just be unutterably stupid. It’s not only what’s expected but is desired in an employee in a massive organization. I don’t have a way for it to be better, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sometimes lead to day drinking…
Squirt has been playing Spore - a game where you control the evolution of a creature from a single cell up to interstellar civilization. It’s a 15 year old game that I bought a Steam copy for 5 bucks in 2020 because I thought he might like it someday. I have lots of games like this that I just bought “just in case.” I remember release day for this game and I actually had an old CD copy of the game...somewhere...because, you know, 15 years old. Except computers don’t have CD drives anymore.
Anyways.
Squirt loves it. He’s been slowly playing past the different stages. Except it’s crashed twice and this last time he lost hours of progress because the stupid game doesn’t autosave apparently. So he’s very upset and, through tears, asks, “Why wouldn’t you let me register for the online stuff to get bugfixes?” I told him there’s no way the bugfixes are behind “Spore Online.” That has to just be for community content and talking to other people. You don’t need this online connection.
Well, I’m wrong: the bugfixes are behind the social online connection. So now we have a game that’s buggy and doesn’t autosave and he needs a social online connection to maybe fix it so he won’t be crushed by losing hours of gameplay work. Alright, let’s set that up - I do have an EA account so I can just tie that in, right?
Yeah...no.
Years ago there must have been some stolen keys on Steam so EA just...removed the ability to have keys on Steam. And the social online account? You guessed it, that requires keys! So I cannot get it working. After some research I realize I can ask EA support for keys so...here’s a quick transcript summary.
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“Hey, can I have a key, here’s proof of my purchase from Steam where I paid 5 dollars for your game.”
‘You don’t need that anymore, just link your EA account and your Steam account’
5 Minutes later: “Done, still having the problem”
‘Okay, your picture says you bought this in 2020. Nobody buys a game in 2020 but doesn’t play it until 2023. You’re obviously trying to steal this 15-year-old game key. Also, that screenshot isn’t valid, it must be a screenshot of the whole screen showing today’s date.’
“Here’s a picture of the whole screen. Also...this is a 5-dollar-game that’s 15 years old and you’re an idiot.”
‘Okay, now I need one of the full transaction history around that time for your account. Whole screen please.’
“Here you go. Yes I have bought some stupid games on sale but I wasn’t going to shrink my resolution to hide my shame.”
‘Great, now send me a picture of the email from Steam you got in 2020 of the same information showing your email address and make sure it’s the whole screen.’
“Here you go. Notice the invoices match. Also...this is a 5 dollar game that’s 15 years old. And it’s stupid you don’t just offer bug fixes.”
‘I will forward this to my team’
10 Minutes later: ‘My team does not accept your first picture because it was taken through the Steam app even though it shows everything. Please open that exact page in your Chrome browser instead and make sure you get the whole screen with today’s date.’
“Here’s a picture through the browser of the whole screen that looks EXACTLY the same as the picture through the embedded browser in the app you don’t like.”
‘Okay, I need a picture of the email you got from Steam in 2020.’
“Here’s another copy of a picture of the email that I sent you 13 minutes ago that you managed to lose already.”
10 Minutes later: “Are they happy now? Can I have my key to the 15 year old game so that I can get bugfixes so my 8 year old doesn’t need to remember to hit “save” periodically on his own because you didn’t put autosaving in your game?”
‘Sorry...haven’t heard back from them yet.’
“Okay, well I’m gonna go to the bathroom and pour a couple fingers of bourbon even though it’s 10am on a Sunday morning. Don’t close this chat please.”
10 Minutes later: ‘Please provide an email of your purchase with the whole screen. Please provide the transaction history with the whole screen. Please provide the “printed” version of the email from steam, but not through the steam browser, and please minimize the view so the whole page is in one screenshot’
“We can both agree this is ridiculous at this point, right?”
‘I’m just the messenger, sir.’
“Yeah, I know this isn’t your fault. Here’s the minimized one screenshot printed version that isn’t through the Steam app and isn’t through my email app.”
‘Okay, can you minimize the other ones too?’
“Aren’t those already good? I’ve given you an email from my email app with the whole screen. I’ve given you the transaction history with the whole screen that captures the whole transaction. I’ve given you the shrunken “printed” version of the whole screen.”
‘I just sent a verification to your email can you give me the code that you received.’
“Your company is trash and I’ve now spent 2 hours of my lifetime in this hellscape because I love my son and I felt horrible to see him devastated to lose hours of his gameplay because of a comedy of stupid decisions that were made years ago. Also - here’s your stupid code.”
‘I agree this is fucking ridiculous but I can’t actually say that, I would like to point out that I can only do as the teams ask of me. I am taking this all back to them now.’
10 Minutes later: ‘Sir, if you could please download the EA App you will see that I’ve now added this game to that version of the game. You can’t use Steam anymore. You won’t have any of the stuff you already did. But it will connect to servers and it will now get updates.’
“Fucking sold my good man! Let me just download this application and then download the game again and then login and prove you’re not lying to me”
15 Minutes later: “I’m running the game, it’s logged in, I can see the stupid content updates and while I would not describe myself as “happy” I am at the very least relieved and can feel my blood pressure receding. Don’t take this the wrong way but I’m gonna bounce now because the bourbon made me really sleepy and now it’s almost lunchtime.”
‘Sure. I would like you to know that this was literally my first case of the day and I appreciate your patience and understanding that none of this was my fault but while you’re enjoying your drunken buzz and eating lunch please know I have to live in this hellscape for the next oh-my-god number of hours and do it all again tomorrow and for who knows how much of my life so maybe gain a little fucking perspective and enjoy your 15 year old game.’
“I mean...harsh but fair...this world can kinda suck and I’m sorry my dude.”
