Update on this 02/26/2014 post, thanks to my wife, Annyth, who generously shared with me this sobering and infuriating June 29, 2025 piece from The Atlantic, click here for the gift article. It outlines how “Endless wait times and excessive procedural fuss” is “all part of a tactic called ‘sludge.’” The author, Chris Colin writes, “There was a time when the happiness of existing customers was a sacred metric. CEOs saw the long arc of loyalty as essential to a company’s success. That arc has snapped.” Colin continues, “One of sludge’s most insidious effects is our ever-diminishing trust in institutions…Once that skepticism sets in, it’s not hard for someone like Elon Musk to gut the government under the guise of efficiency (My emphasis).”

As it is with all those unattended checkout lanes that were initially installed at grocery stores and the like, a previous topic here at portfoliolongo.com, so it is, I’m guessing, with most call centers.