Cog People

I expect to do a review/rant on my experience at the Austin Community College in a few days, in which cog people will feature. I thought it would be a good idea to define my (made up) term first.

A cog person is anyone who is part of a machine. They lack the authority and/or the intelligence to cope with any situation that isn't coded into the machine's operating system. Much like an old computer that locks up if you try to run more than one program at a time.

A classic example is the menu of choices when you call a corporation. 'For Accounts Payable, press 1. For Customer Service, press 2. To express your hatred of our existence, press 3. To speak with our lawyers, who have a multi-million dollar retainer to talk to customers like you, press 4. For confirmation that you will never ever get what you actually want, press 5. To hear this menu again, press 6. Thank you for calling Evil Bureaucracy Inc.'

But if you have a problem that doesn't fit any of the menu choices, you're stuck in an endless loop of being transferred from one department to another until you can get a supervisor or manager on the line.

The problem is that cog people really are people. It's not really their fault that they can't help you. It's the system that works against you, not them personally. Which means that after getting frustrated, irritated, and generally much too warm under the collar, you then feel guilty for being so angry at a harmless human being.

It's the machine that hates you, not the clerk, cashier, or phone-answering-person.

As far as I can tell, ACC hires no one who does not meet their rigorous requirements of cog-hood. No one has the authority to do anything that can't be done by rote. It's a scientific miracle. The whole system should have exploded or just fallen apart years ago, yet it continues to devour students alive, semester after semester.