The only website that closes at night

The revolutionary thing about the internet is that it's "always on". Do some shopping at midnight in your PJ's? Yep. Watch a movie at 3 AM from bed? Absolutely.

Which is why I was astonished to discover a website that has "normal business hours" and actually closes at night. Of course it would be a government website, namely the Social Security Administration.


How did I discover this?
I recently heard it's possible to estimate your future social security benefits on the Social Security website, so I decided to try it out. But following the link that says "Estimate Your Retirement Benefits", I was greeted with a CLOSED message, which is probably the only website in the world that actually closes at night.

Turns out since it's 10:22 PM here on the West Coast, I'm outside of those normal operating hours for those East Coast servers.

Seriously, what in the world?

<rant> Please don't send an email like this to customer support

In this episode of "the life of a business owner..."

People say the darndest things when writing in to customer support. Here's a recent example sent in to FolioHD.

"My service is still not working. My business depends on the reliability of this website and if this can't be fixed I'll have to switch providers immediately."

Do customers think support people are more inclined to respond faster if they include a line like this? Do they subconsciously think a slight threat is going to get their problem fixed any faster?

The unfortunate fact is that 99 out of 100 times, the "problem" is a user error (at least in our case - in this particular instance, a misconfigured domain name). But when you're the service provider, it's never the customer's fault -- and I'll gladly take on their problem as if it were the most important thing in the world, but because I want them to have a good experience, not because of their tone.

There's just something inside me that hopes they don't correlate their slightly threatening tone to what got their problem resolved, because it really doesn't help.

</rant>

Disincentivized

  • It was announced today that illegal immigrants will now be eligible to receive back tax refunds even though they've never actually paid taxes.
  • Today I went to pick up a prescription that cost me over $100 because my new Obamacare insurance doesn't cover it. My old insurance was 1/4 the cost and covered everything.
  • I'm working on filing my taxes and am astounded at the amount of money I'm handing over to Uncle Sam. And I'm seeing less in return for it than ever before.

I'm beginning to wonder what the point is of working hard all day, sometimes nights and weekends. I work more than I should, to the point it sometimes starts to interfere with relationships and social activities and I have to constantly keep myself in check, but I've chosen to do it because I enjoy it and because I want to get ahead.

But with every action our government takes, they take away my incentive to actually try to get ahead.

Why should I work hard to pay for a $100 prescription, where if I made less money, I wouldn't pay anything at all?

Why should I work to pay my rent, when the government would chip in and help me pay for a place just as nice if I made less money?

Why is the government handing out my money who have done nothing to earn it and who haven't gone through the legal routes to be here?

This system doesn't work. The people on the low end of the pole have no incentive to work hard because they are being handed everything. And the people on the upper end have no incentive to work hard because they'll get the same benefits regardless of how hard they work.

Welcome to the new America.