It’s my 3rd blog and already I was starting to wonder if I had it in me to continue with this blog writing mission. It can’t be a good sign to start getting the first twangs of writers block after only 2 scantily read blogs. I think the problem was that things were going okay and no one wants to read about someone telling you that they’re doing just fine. When things go fantastic you can’t write about it either but you don’t really care, because your life is fantastic and the people waiting to read your musings can go get stuffed. But when things annoy or amuse you, that’s when the inspiration flows.
I shouldn’t have been concerned. I live in a city with millions of people. That’s one of the benefits of living in such a populous place, inspiration is just a trip down the road away. Today’s particular trip involved a journey to the bank. I’m aware that my last blog was about a trip to the bank and I’m sorry but hopefully you’ll understand why I had to tell you about this.
It’s my fault. I went outside of my comfort zone and apparently outside of the banks comfort zone. I did something that I don’t think I’ve ever done before, I asked to speak to the financial advisor. The financial advisor and I have never really had anything to talk about before. A financial advisor normally advises you to put your money in some sort of savings or investment account where you can’t touch it and I normally advise them that I’m going to take my money and spend it. Probably on wine and chocolate, because deep down I’m a middle aged woman.
But today was different, given the financial turmoil in the UK and the imminent collapse of every UK final salary pension plan I decided to see if I could transfer my three shiny silver coins to a superannuation fund in Australia. This is something I don’t know how to do, so I went to the bank seeking advice from an expert.
Unfortunately for me, the expert was on holiday so I had to speak to the branch manager. When I first told her my cunning plan she didn’t immediately give the impression of being an expert at anything but she said she could help, and I’ve had a relatively dull week, so I sat down in the little office and waited for the advice to flow.
The advice didn’t immediately flow, instead she paused, and then reaching for the computer screen she turned it so we could both see the glowing beauty of the knowledge she controlled. This, I thought, was a good start. I liked that she was taking her time, building the tension. She obviously knew what she was doing. Apparently there was a source that would provide the answer to my simple little question and she was so confident that she had turned the screen for both of us to see her genius. But what was this magical oracle that was going to answer my pathetic little child-like problem… that’s right kids, she then opened up internet explorer, moved the curser to the address bar and typed in the G word.
She went to the oracle of Google. Right in front of me! Then she had the balls to wonder why I became surly with her. Society today relies on Google. We all reach for Google on a daily basis and it generally helps us at time when we can’t be bothered to think for ourselves. It’s a crutch that I lean on more than I like to admit.
But she didn’t just reach for Google to find the address of a specific web page that she had previously used to answer this question. What she actually typed into Google was:
“How do I transfer my UK pension fund to an Australian superannuation fund?”
She even used a question mark, as if Google gives a toss about punctuation. Why tell me that you could provide any help? I could have sat on a step outside the bank on my mobile phone and come up with that answer. In fact,as soon as I left, I did. I think what angers me the most is that it was actually quite helpful.
Maybe this will make a good blog, maybe it won’t, but in a protest to this week's Google based incident and in order to justify my superiority complex, I’m going to ban myself from using the Google search engine for the next week. I’m actually going to ban myself from using any search engines all together for a week. I want to see if I can survive without it and I challenge you to do the same. Please feel free to leave comments or tweet me (@counterproduct) about your Google free week.
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