As an IT support monkey, one of the worst parts of the job is having to tell the customer their data is gone. Even when the data loss is through no faults of my own (of which sadly I have done once), the empath in me feels tremendous guilt for delivering the final negative verdict to the hopeful customer. Obviously, no one likes to hear bad news. If you’re the people-pleasing type (that’s me), you want to avoid being the messenger at all costs.
Friendly reminder: have backups of your digital life. A single point of failure can indeed fail at anytime, sometimes with no one to blame but god.
It’s frustrating when I am unable to book plane tickets via the Chase travel portal. (I want to use my credit card points, and get 5X back on the purchase, obviously.) Apparently, the portal might not show all available seating configurations, or that particular flight at all. Of course, the safest option is always to book directly with the airline, but then I would be losing out on precious reward points. Not in this economy! At least for me, I’ve never had an issue in all the years booking stuff through the Chase travel portal.
Due to the ticket unavailability on the portal, I had to book my fight directly with China Southern Airlines. Their website looks like it barely made it out of Web 1.0 era design language. I guess it’s easier to manage the backend when the frontend isn’t fancifully full of code. But who cares about shiny coats of paint so long as a website functions correctly. After a bit of clunkiness, I was able to book my ticket for the 2025 trip back home to China.
Instead of getting back 5% on my thousands of dollar, I have to settle for 2%. Very sad!
Coolest customer.