As I have mentioned in an earlier blog, I work at a roadside assistance dispatch center. As such, I deal on a daily basis with approximately 60 customers, each of which need some form of roadside assistance, of which 25% are at home, 20% are in parking lots of businesses, 50% are on major highways, and 5% are in the middle of nowhere. Now, the 25% who are at home are easy to deal with. We usually have their address on file, and just need to send someone out to unlock the vehicle, provide a jump start, or change the tire. Piece of cake. Those in business parking lots are easy to find, especially Walmarts, Walgreens, Safeways, Costcos, etc. Oddly enough, those who are in the middle of nowhere aren't NEARLY as hard to find as those on MAJOR HIGHWAYS. By hard to find, I'm speaking of the process in which we verify the location of their vehicle. Contrary to popular belief, we are not yet equipped to pull their location off of their GPS-enabled device, we use an older (And somewhat more reliable) method of verifying by address or crossing streets. When it comes to a Highway, it should be VERY easy: we just find out which exits they're between (Somewhere between exits 46 & 48 on I-75 North, for example). What is SO surprising is the fact that most people on highways have NO CLUE what the last exit they passed was, what the next exit is, or, often enough, what CITY they're in. A location-verification that should take literally five seconds turns into twenty minutes of asking "do you remember seeing any landmarks, mile markers, exit numbers, streets, businesses, etc. nearby?" and posing those questions in hundreds of different ways until finally something registers in their mind that helps specify their location. And the saddest part of all is the fact that most customers travel the same stretch of highway every single day, and on the day they break down have no idea where they're at. The stupidity of the average American commuter scares me.
8 Comments
God, I am exactly the type of commuter you would hate…except I’m Australian. :p I have no clue about what roads I’m on, only it looks familiar and I travel on it every day of the year. I often don’t even know what freeway I’m on. XD
Sadly to say, the American IQ is dropping–all at the cost of other Americans who are still intelligent (ex. you, irawk and others who come to VuTales) and sensible. 🙁
You guys should have a policy where you won’t help people if they don’t even know where they are; then they’ll be motivated to retain information of where they are driving (especially freeway drivers).
I tend to ‘remember’ things that don’t actually exist..I once told my friend I took some road down to the train station when in reality I had no idea this road even existed.
My way of avoiding this problem: don’t travel.
i dont drive
You guys should have a policy where you won’t help people if they don’t even know where they are; then they’ll be motivated to retain information of where they are driving (especially freeway drivers).
That would be a wonderful policy. Sadly enough, if we were to begin to do that, the customers would drop their insurance company (or club membership) and then our clients would lose their customers and we, in turn, would lose clients. And we can’t let that happen. 🙁
Solution: Remove the safety labels and let the problem fix itself.
well dude, most people use highways as a means to an end. the way theyre going not anywherew where they might need to remember something. the only exit one thinks of is hte one htey need to get off of