Tied to Word

I have battled though my computer treating me like a moronic child to write this.  I have declined choosing my browser; I have noted twice (why does it ask you twice now?) that I have rarely used icons on my desktop that I am happy having there and not progressed with the 'wizard' to remove them; I have sat through updates generic ones and specific ones for Java and Adobe software; I have refused my memory stick asking if I want to run software off and declined to decide which sofware I might want to save images through on to it; I have decided not to register the other games and things I have on my system or download new stuff for World of Warcraft add-ons, my Steam account for wargaming or register other packages and have finally go to what I actually want to do.  Imagine on 'Star Trek' or 'Doctor Who' or a string of science fiction series if they had to click through a score of demands and could not operate the spaceship or time machine until 9 updates had been downloaded.  This was not the future I envisaged as I now have a computer that takes longer to start up than my ZX Spectrum did in 1982 when I had to load in software off audio cassettes.

That is a common gripe of mine and now I move to another computer issue which is around the continued dominance of Microsoft, not in terms of operating systems, which, in the UK, in contrast, say, to Germany, they are really unchallenged, but in terms of wordprocessing software.  In 2009, Office was used by 80% of businesses, with 80% of their files stored in one of its packages.  For the past year or so, the bundling of Microsoft Office on new computers has ended and you now have to go out and buy all the software at a cost of £200, which for the computers I buy, that is a third or more of the entire cost price of the computer.  Now, like many users I do not want to beholden to a particular company and certainly feel monopolies are unhealthy for consumers.  Remember that a monopoly does not mean one company has 100% control of sales, it is, as Milton Freeman in 'Capitalism and Freedom' (1962) helpfully summarises a situation in which: 'a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it'.  This is why you find other packages resembling the Office ones even when produced by other companies.  Furthermore as Blinder, Baumol and Gale in 'Monopoly' (2001) say a monopoly is: 'a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they [the monopoly company] provide and a lack of viable substitute goods'.

Now, I remember the excellent word processor package 'Locoscript' which came bundled with the Amstrad PCW256 and 512 computers in the late 1980s.  I have never encountered a word processing package half as good as that since.  Year on year the Microsoft take on an increasingly juvenile appearance with soft tones and round edges that do not communicate business to me.  There has been criticism of their most recent redesign for Office 2007 with Word have a series of folder tabs.  It continued the computing tendency to treat us like children, not certain about what we wanted to do with the facilities, rather than what most business people want to do, which is get on quickly with what we know we need to do.  Every time I get access to a new computer I have to go round disabling so much.  I have been writing letters from before the concept of the home computer was even taken as more than something in a science fiction fantasy alongside flying cars and domestic robots.  I do not need an American system to show me how to write a letter wrongly and try to make me use 'yours truly' at the end which only has a sarcastic use in British letters, not ever one that a business person would use.

In the James Bond movie, 'Tomorrow Never Dies' (1997), the prime baddie, poorly played by Jonathan Pryce is shown as launching a software package intentionally full of 'bugs', i.e. software functioning flaws, that customers will have to keep coming back to the company for 'patches' to repair the errors.  People have rather felt that Microsoft Vista operating system fits this kind of approach.  While I have seen how difficult it is to make Vista work properly in a business context, I do not think that Microfsoft wants to take over the world, I think they, like all companies, want simply to make as much money as possible.  In the age of saved personal information and loyalty card mentality all companies want to capture and hold customers.  Microsoft had to address the attempts at capturing unseen metadata in 2004 producing an add-on to expose this and in Office 2007 there is a document inspector to show it.  Microsoft has been critcised for its use of proprietary style software rather than open source which gives greater power for users to work on new developments, though gradually from 2004 and especially since 2008 it is moving in giving greater access to the code.  It is things like this that make people suspect some sort of conspiracy on Microsoft's part.  However, court rulings have shown that while there may be no great sinister intent, the position of Microsoft is seen as being unhealthy for the free marketplace and customer choice.

The big challenge for the average computer user is that while some greater choice may be being opened up by court rulings and legislation, for us, even when we have to buy our own copies of Office, the monopoly position persists.  This is because of the number of companies that simply default to Office packages, notably Word.  When I went for an interview last autumn I had to quickly teach myself Word 2007 as I was instructed to write a briefing report in 30 minutes using the computer provided.  I was quite impressed that I was able to get to grips with the alien layout and produce the report in time.  However, the assumption, was, that, of course, I would know Word 2007 (it being 2009).  I was in a weak position as not having bought a computer since 2006 I did not have the latest software and my previous employers, being heavily involved in computing, only ever buys the previous Microsoft Office package as it feels that that allows the errors to be ironed out.  Consequently up to my redundancy in summer 2009 I was still using Office 2003.

The problems, and thus the pressure to keep up with all of Microsoft's twists and turns with its software, continued as I came to my new employer.  I received all the documentation connected with my new job in .docx format which only came into use with Office 2007.  Of course, I could not even open the files and when I pleaded for them to be saved in the older .doc format no-one at the new employer understood what I was talking about.  So, if I get the money, I am compelled to buy the latest Office version simply to interact with employers and; most companies have no real idea about the changes in the software they are using and simply buy whatever is the latest.  I hear there is Office 2010 on the way and I dread what new formats and childish interfaces that will use.

So, what am I asking for?  Well it is two-fold.  One is that software for business looks like it is intended for business not for the primary school.  We need to be treated as adults who know what we are doing without constant, American-specific prompts.  We will seek out help and guidance when we need it but most of the time we want to get on quickly with our work.  The second thing is for companies to plough on not giving any thought to the software they use or the impact it will have on their workers and customers.  Do not simply default to the latest Microsoft package, think about it, and, as my previous employer did, have the courage to stick with something that you have confidence in.  Basically, we need to stand up for mature, business-orientated approaches to software.

P.P. 30/03/2015
I have come across an anomalous automatic correction in Word.  I am writing a medieval story in which characters use warhammers.  For some reason Word does not like this term even though it is historically correct.  What it invariably does is change it to Warhammer with a capital 'W'.  I have to change it back to lower case.  This change presumably is because of the lead figure and computer games named this.  However, 'Warhammer' (1983) the initial fantasy wargame was named after the weapon.  Thus, we have a situation where the commercial version is acceptable to Word but the legitimate word it was based on is not.  I imagine in time it will do the same to 'diplomacy' and 'monopoly'.

Hurdles to Getting Jobs from Tramlined Career Paths

Back in the 1990s I was travelling on a train from Waterloo, I think going to Surbiton. There were two businessmen in their forties talking with two Frenchwomen in their twenties. They were discussing (in English) the nature of employment in Britain and shared a common viewpoint that Britain was good for work because things were so flexible. One of the women asked if the men had read 'The State We're In' by Will Hutton (1996) which was the 'in' book at the time, a popular, serious book about the state of Britain before New Labour came to power. Of course, being British businessmen neither of them had been anywhere near a book on the economy or British society. Anyway, they were interested in why the women were in the UK. At the time it had been announced that there were 160,000 French living and working in London. She said it was because in France all careers were locked into particular paths. You studied the relevant qualifications at school and then went into that career. The tight link between specific qualifications and particular jobs meant it was almost impossible to change careers. She felt the UK was different allowing people to shift into fields in which there were vacancies at a particular time.

There has always been a drive to improve the quality of service that people receive in the UK and despite the British reluctance to ever engage seriously with vocational qualifications we have seen them increase, notably with the introduction of NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications) in 1986. Employers liked them as they could be done in the workplace meaning that their workers would not be taken away from them even for a day per week as was the case with qualifications such as City & Guilds. With increasing regulation over standards, notably in catering and residential care it allowed them to comply with such standards without feeling they were giving up anything much. You have to bear in mind that every time there is a bank holiday in the UK, employers whine publicly about the laziness of British workers when we have five fewer per year, i.e. a working week's worth, less than the next nearest country in the EU. We have not yet moved to the situation of Germany where there are schools and qualifications for waiters, but the past two decades have seen the UK edge in that direction.

Now, I am a strong supporter of education for all. I also think that we have seen great improvement in service sector provision, especially in hygeine and in care for residential patients. However, we have now begun to move to the tram-lined employment patterns of France. As regular readers know I have now been unemployed for three months so am beginning to look well beyond my previous employment for work, both geographically and in terms of nature of employment. Of course, you always run up against job specifications saying 'must have substantial experience' which means that unless you joined that profession at 16 you stand little chance. Software is also being put up as a hurdle, not simply the Office packages we can all access comparatively easily, but also things like SITS management information software, Prince2 project management software, PASW statistical analysis software are just a few examples. However, it is now reinforced by 'must have ABTA qualification' to work in a travel agency; 'must have NVQ2' - in an advertisement for a groundskeeper. Now even manual jobs need qualifications. All employers now assume that any worker must arrive fully trained in the specific packages they use, no matter if there are other packages out there, or be considered utterly useless. British employers never want to train their staff, they always want someone else to do it for them.

I am torn between wanting good quality service in service industries, which I acknowledge comes from training, and yet realising that there are scores and scores of jobs even comparatively low skilled ones for which I will never be able to apply because back in 1992 I did not take an NVQ qualification in warehousing and in 2003 did not persuade my employer to buy one piece of software rather than the one he bought. Of course, in a period of unemployment, these employers will generally find someone out there who does have the precise qualification and expertise they want. In smaller towns it might be less easy and of course the more caveats you put on a post the smaller you make your supply pool so you increase demand in relation to supply and force up the cost, i.e. the salaries to secure those workers. Having such refined requirements may make it easier for recruiters by reducing the number of applicants, but in fact increases 'frictional' unemployment, because it may be that the only people with the relevant NVQ are in the town 15 kilometres away. Perhaps a particular local college did not teach that software and yet the people in the next town do not want to relocate to your town for the job. I suppose in the old Norman Tebbit attitude they should then be compelled to 'get on your bike' and travel for work. Of course, there are probably more opportunities to retrain these days certainly than was the case in the 1980s, but retraining needs time and money and the bulk of unemployed people lack both of those things.

So, given that I am excluded from so many jobs by their qualification criteria let alone my lack of experience, what options am I left with? Basically, in my district, two. The first is to work in a call centre. I was struck by one advertisement which said the job requires you to make a minimum of 250 calls per day, which by my calculation means that in a 7.5 hour day you have to make 1.8 calls per minute! Maybe that is possible if you were trying to cold call sell double glazing but this company is involved in cold calling to get performance data from companies. I guess it will take you more than 30 seconds for the call to be answered and the telephonist to even direct you to the right department even before you can begin to try to persuade the company to tell you about their performance. Thus, the day, in fact must be far longer than 7.5 hours. I also love the names call centre jobs now have, such as 'Customer Retention Advisor' which is increasingly common, whenever you try to cancel a service you get put on to a member of staff who tries to persuade you not to leave. This is a whole wing of call centre staff now, alongside the cold callers and the standard customer service staff (even the Department of Work and Pensions has adopted this approach, you now call up to 'sign on' and the call centre worker goes through a lengthy script).

The other job vacancy in my district for which you need no experience is to be as an extra or an actor/actress in 'adult', i.e. pornographic movies. It even emphasises on the advertisement, that whilst you must be over 18 for the job (there seems to be no upper limit, I suppose under ageism laws they cannot set one), it does not matter if your sexuality is 'straight, gay, bi or tri...' I have no idea what a trisexual is, though I must say that on a job application for a company I completed the other day there were four categories under gender, the two traditional ones plus male-to-female transexual and female-to-male transexual; interestingly hermaphrodite was not listed, but I guess these days you would be compelled to go into one of those transexual categories, even if you are not actually moving in one direction or the other.

Repeatedly coming up against qualification, software and experience is frustrating as what I had seen as the safety net of taking an low-skilled, low wage job is effectively barred to me in a way it was not back when I was last unemployed in the early 1990s. Employers can be choosy at present, but in time when employment increases they need to shake off the assumption that they have no responsibility for the training of their staff and that everyone must know the business precisely and what particular software the company has selected before they arrive. Otherwise they foster a narrowly focused workforce that is always going to be prone to unemployment as qualifications evolve and software packages become obsolete.