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Accountability sinks

(aworkinglibrary.com)
493 points l0b0 | 4 comments | 19 Oct 24 23:39 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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rougka ◴[20 Oct 24 05:35 UTC] No.41893123[source]▶
I remember experiencing this in one of the German airports/airlines and having that exact thought.

It was this fully automated airport, where the checkin is self serviced and you only interact with computers.

Eventually, when I inserted my boarding pass I had a printed piece of paper back that said that they had to change my seat from aisle to midseat

I then tried to find someone to talk to the entire way, but computers can only interact in the way the UI was designed, and no programmer accounted or cared for my scenario

The ground attendant couldn't have done anything of course because it wasn't part of the scope of her job, and this was the part of germany where nice was not one of their stereotypes.

Eventually I got a survey a week later about a different leg of the flight, so could I really complain there? that one was fine? I had a paranoid wonder if that was intentional

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eloisius ◴[20 Oct 24 06:41 UTC] No.41893412[source]▶
I had a similar experience in Germany about a year ago. Train stations are mostly self-service now. The ticket kiosk ate my €50 and promptly rebooted. It didn’t print a receipt or anything. The only human I could find was a security guard. He told me to call the number on a sticker on the machine. The person who answered couldn’t speak English. My €50 is out there somewhere but it would cost me more than that to track it down.
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larodi ◴[20 Oct 24 07:36 UTC] No.41893645[source]▶
That’s a sad experience and I would definitely try to chase them robots. Sadly even though German public transport fascinates with its ease of use and quality, though when it comes to human service you can find yourself in peculiar position. And particularly if you are not German and happen to be in one of those international cities there where Germans are fed up with visitor. You waive goodbye to your 50€ and keep a story to tell, that’s all.

Sadly I don’t expect this all to get any better with robots and LLms and thing. We will be crying to meet a human sooner than later, and my hope is this far cry will eventually get us to the dawn of new era when you actually have people in the loop, just for humanity’s sake.

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1. formerly_proven ◴[20 Oct 24 08:34 UTC] No.41893906[source]▶
> german public transport fascinates with its ease of use and quality

You have something mixed up there.

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2. immibis ◴[20 Oct 24 08:42 UTC] No.41893948[source]▶
It's definitely easy to use. You show up at the station when the train is coming. You get on the train. Later, you get off the train. No security checks like an airport. No multi step check in. Just be there and get on. In many cases your ticket won't even be checked, and when it is it's while you're seated while the train is moving. Getting a ticket is no problem: the ticket machines are multilingual, and you type in the stops you want to go from/to and the date. You can also book one online and get a QR-like code you can print or display on your phone.

Quality is mediocre. The trains are often delayed, which is a problem with the size of the network and cascading failures. Once they do get to A, they get from A to B just fine, the seats are okay, the luggage space is okay, etc. The DB Navigator app is useful for finding alternative routes but it won't tell you whether your ticket is valid for them. It will tell you if the delay is so long that you're allowed to use any route.

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3. JumpCrisscross ◴[20 Oct 24 18:34 UTC] No.41897475[source]▶
> You show up at the station when the train is coming. You get on the train. Later, you get off the train.

The train is late. The lounges suck or are tied to a complex system of ticket tiers that seemingly don't correlate to price. You bought a specific seat but the train was changed so now no assigned seat and lol on a refund. And fuck you if you're crossing borders.

Germans travel a good amount by car for good reason [1]. When I'm in Germany, I tend to drive between cities because the alternative is burning several hours in buffers and delays.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

4. larodi ◴[21 Oct 24 15:18 UTC] No.41905121[source]▶
interestingly you forget to mention something that was not there 20 years ago, when these trains still be running ok. all that was not so well connected with all apps, you can have a Lime calculated in your route perhaps today, which was not there. and this all IS connected with DE system of public transport, which on its own, no matter the technical underlying, is superb. and trains are lot cleaner than many other places, even those regularly servicing Berlin,