The Tyranny of Technology and the Demise of Good Salesmanship

My dad just returned his second new computer in a month. Since my mom has finally adapted to her new Mac, and my sister and brother-in-law are Mac devotees, my 70 year old dad, (who’s ancient machine was running Windows 98), figured it was time he went out and got one too.

That lasted about five minutes.

You really can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Like me, his needs are few in a world of constant upgrades. More bells and whistles, however, don’t necessarily add more value for us simpleton consumers. The learning curve stretches out away from us, no matter what we do, the horizon of mastery eludes us.

Dad returned the Mac, then went to the store to try again. This time, a second num-nut salesperson with similarly low pre-qualifying skills sold him a $900 PC with Windows 7. My dad was probably trying not to be too cheap. So he drifts in the middle isle of prices, figuring he should be ‘getting warmer’.

His big complaint with computers, however, is pretty much the same as mine. We just want the damn things to turn on and off quickly, and to be able to open and close applications without it taking four and a half minutes.

That’s it.Really.

If a salesperson had actually asked him a question or two they’d have figured out he’s a Neo Luddite technophobe- (no make that techno hater!) – just like his daughter. What he needs is something as similar and simple as what he’s had before. Extra memory perhaps.

What he needs is what my brilliant boyfriend figured out would be great for me after being miserable with my old laptop running a much hated Vista for several years.

I bought a $219 machine running XP, and spend fifty bucks to get 2 more mega or giga or whatever the fuck memory is these days, (like I give a rat’s ass), so the XP isn’t running on minimal.

BAM! I have a blazing fast computer!

And who needs all that crap that comes preloaded, stuff that’s overkill for my dad and me? Who needs a suite of “productivity tools”? We’re not a graphic designers, we don’t do multimedia presentations.

My dad still makes real estate flyers by gluing pictures of a house to a copies of a hand drawn floor plan and a list of amenities.

Both of us are  analogue refugees in a cold digital world.

As for salesmanship, well sales has become synonymous with order taking, as in “would you like fries with that?”

I’m beginning to think even the supposedly tech savvy guys at a place like Fry’s can’t possibly keep up with product knowledge anyway. With so many improvements coming faster and faster, how can they ever know their products well enough to be able to match them to a consumer?

Does anybody else feel they’ve gotten suckered, has bought completely unnecessary stuff because of a rampant zeal for more, bigger, better, new, the latest, blah blah bullshit, coupled with the decline of salesmanship?

What other options do we have?

Do you really enjoy spending hours researching and evaluating every piece of tech crap that probably has a shelf life of only about six months?