Its supposed to be illegal for banks to be in “sales” but my wife was working for BMO and they were forcing her to prioritize outbound cold calls ans upselling products the customer didnt need and would clearly be bad for their financials as a Personal Banking Assistant. The conflict of interest was so great it stressed her right the fuck out and she had to take leave and start therapy. Her MS also spiked likely due to the stress levels. She was there to help people, and she made the bank earn loyal customers and they willing got more products from the bank because she helped them. She was the top performer at the bank if she just let her do the job she was there to do, but instead her boss started ragging on her daily about her cold calling numbers and forcing her to cancel necessary appointments and focus time to deal with customer requests and instead prioritize sales.

In the end her numbers dropped, her customer satisfaction dropped, and her MS got worse from the stress and she’s now on long term leave, uncertain if she’ll recover her focus and able to go back to work. Her neurologist has said she cannot go back for now.

Not sure how that bullshit helped the bank, but I can sure see how I didn’t, and I may be wrong but I think there are laws against it.

Also worth noting that this change in tactics happened right at the same time BMO took all their “we’re here to help” signage down. Brings so many memories of Google dropping the “don’t be evil”. Everything that came after in both cases was shit.

EDIT: Oh looks like CBC did an article on this now because it is so prolific. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/banks-upselling-go-public-1.4023575

Thanks!

Now you’ve got me wondering about this for Canada. Would be a pita to move mortgage and investments, but there must be a better way than the big banks.

The problem for me is that most Canadian Banks give you the choice of SMS or their shitty adware filled bank app that relies on Google Play Services and wont implement TOTP so I can use a true MFA app. And Im done with being forced to accept user policies I don’t agree with to do shit, and most of all done with Google Play Services on my device 😑

I have a gloriously reduced monthly subscription footprint and application footprint because of all the motherfuckers that tied ChatGPT or other AI into their garbage and updated their terms to say they were going to scan my private data with AI.

And, even if they pull it, I don’t think I’ll ever go back. No more cloud drives, no more ‘apps’. Webpages and local files on a file share I own and host.

Not really, and I’m over it. Couldnt really get people to move away from Meta products either. I just do what is best for me and my family’s privacy without waiting for all my friends to join me. Plenty of cool people here.

Same, zero cats.

Lol, Niantic coding anything that actually works well is hilarious.

I’d also argue that Ingress players likely gave them way more useful data than PoGo

Still not ready to trust AMD/ATI again. I used them exclusively right up until they bought ATI and then decided fuck open source and the drivers for Linux tanked.

I hear all the issues folks have had with Intel/NVIDIA but I have yet to experience any of them. From where I’m sitting they are still working great. And their open source has not been perfect but its consistent. Instead of going from being golden to fuck you Linux folks overnight.

named a TV show after it

The Springfields?

As much as I love Vulcan, AB… based on the qualifiers for this post, it is disqualified by Dildo, Newfoundland.

Dildo, Newfoundland, Canada: 803 people as of 2021.

Someone here mentioned Vulcan, Alberta - however given the qualifiers of country and size, its 1769 people disqualifies it.

Also, though I am a Trekkie myself and know that Vulcan is well known in those circles, it’s virtually unheard of outside them.

Meanwhile, Dildo:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/odd-stories-of-2019-1.5389442

I’d go back to the Yukon Gold Rush and make sure Fred Trump never made it out of Canada.

Edit: Doh! No consequences… huh. I’m not really sure it would be worth the trip then.

Time to build a new one and this time, dont tell investors.

DuckDuckGo is still the main one but the Bing results annoy me (MSN news proxied articles from other news sites)

Up and comers that are promising:

Ecosia: https://www.ecosia.org/

Startpage: https://www.startpage.com/

Stumbled on this today, worth a look: https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/

How you fuckers doing, eh?

Users are testing the impact of not using Google.

Spoiler: non-LLM enshittified search engines return reliable results and usually are not censored.

With Martok

Designers need to wake up and realize their job is to understand what the user wants not what they saw in a wet dream.

Most importantly always break well before a turn in snow. Never break in a turn.