The Failure Department
...is always here for you
When shit conks out, if you can’t connect, or have a question about your bill. They’ll be there. When that one part of the thing breaks and now it’s useless, you’ll know the failure department had its hands in it. But they won’t help, that’s not their job. Not at all. They are just there to create and manage your failure. To develop systems around it, plan for it, help you accept it as part of life. The failure department has one goal, make you stare helplessly to the heavens and wonder why things have gone so wrong as the inevitability of spending more money and more time rains down on you. They will hold your hand, but they will not help. If they were there to actually help or solve they’d be the success department. They are not. Not by a long shot.
No one knows them by name, but they are there, lurking in every corporation. Pulling the strings on the system, making sure nothing gets done quite right, but not so badly anyone can point at them. They make sure the corners are cut, but not lopped off. Just trimmed. They plan for obsolescence, confuse the systems and make sure the new parts for the cool new feature fizzle out quickly. The men and women of the failure department don’t work late. Home by 4:45 everyday. A solid, useless job, and the magic is, they don’t even know they’re in the department. They think they’re helping. But they are just part of the amorphous amoeba of general suck. They get hired in customer service, or warranty fulfillment, or billing, or product design. They set the price for replacement parts, and manage the shipping. They design the bill, and the update and project manage the new model. They take every opinion and reflect it in the next draft making it slightly less legible and moderately less usable. They did their job well, and by well I mean thorough mediocrity. They muddle through meetings, they appease, they love the phrase, “It is what it is.” And that’s the subtle genius of the proud members of the failure department. They don’t even know they work for the failure department. It’s like Fight Club that way, but the first rule is that you’re entirely clueless.
Those in the failure department just let their customer’s hair tearing frustration wash over them like gooey globs of jojoba conditioner and think to themselves, “man, why are people so grumpy these days?”
The failure department slows your computer and makes your phone stop holding a charge. But the failure department can’t be reached, nor will it be found on any company directory, because the failure department operates in the shadows. Can’t decipher your health insurance bills? Don’t understand your copay or the codes generated for a procedure, or why doing what your doctor suggests will cost you more? The failure department is handling that. Internet out, did you unplug it and plug it back in? Are you sure you unplugged it? Are you interested in upgrading your speed to giga X1? Let me get your phone number in case you get disconnected when I transfer you, because this system is wonky… “Shhhh, that’s them at work. They made that network, and it’s humming right along according to plan. Enjoy the hold music.”
Recently I have been most impressed with the failure department of the once great American company GE. Where once there were hard working Americans in thick framed glasses designing the next generation of amazing home products, now there are middle managers spending their days figuring out just how mad they can make me with their products’ poor quality and despicable lack of longevity before I actually lose my mind. After they look at all the data, present the presentations, say happy Friday in status meetings that start 12 minutes late, they spit out a number. A simple price. A replacement microwave keypad board will cost $418. Wonderful. A perfect number. Just too much for me to say “sure, we’ll fix it.” Just enough for me to ask, how much is a new microwave? Oh $623? Great, thanks G.E.F.D. Doesn’t matter that this microwave is only four years old. Doesn’t matter that I rarely even use the fucking thing. All that matters is that I’m a week from thanksgiving and the failure department has struck again.
Dear GE, I am desperately trying not to see the precipitous decline in the quality of your appliances as an analogy for this country. You used to be cool. Great products that inspired great American entrepreneurial imagination.
But man, if your MRI machines work as well as your microwaves I’m gonna choose to get scanned at staples instead. The fact is your organization has been taken over by the failure department and if you’re wondering what it will do to your company’s future just call 1-800-BOEING.
Despite my attempts, I have failed to be hired by the Failure department multiple times now.
The good news is these additional failures are helping beef up the "experience with failure" section of my CV for my next attempt.
Very funny and clever!
My experience with the failure department was with a home warranty company. For $100, they told me to replace a light bulb to fix a leaking fridge. (I also had to replace my microwave for a minor broken part which is not made anymore apparently)