NotYourSocialWorker

From a business standpoint I would never want to hire that accountant. If he openly talks about employees that way and being a bad customers to others he would probably also be a very bad supplier.

Companies would rather cut their noses of in the end of a quarter, to claim a weight loss, than do something that would spell positive results for its lifetime...

Yup, that's my experience as well.

Ouch, yes, you're right.

I still think that one should pass the shame on to the employers but I'll amend that to not put the employee in the middle of it all.

Conspiracy theory it is. What has happened to the internet is much more easily explained by capitalism. This is what capitalism does.

I bet that you don't need to follow that conspiracy theory very far before you find someone spouting the old classical antisemitic bullshit.

Pass the awkwardness on and place yourself on the side of the employee and shame the employer:
"Oh man this is wild! Just to think that your employers has the audacity to instead of raising your salary to compensate inflation, they just passed that cost onto your customers. I would be so mad if I were you, to be forced to hope for the kindness of strangers instead of getting a liveable salary."

It's easy to get stuck in a filter bubble though.

I recently had the misfortune of trying to fix a problem on my kids windows computer and it's striking the difference between Linux and windows forums.

A Linux forum:
"RTFM but here's four commands that will fix your problem plus fix a bunch of things you didn't even know you had a problem with"

A windows forum:
"My name is Mr Anderson and has been awarded high quality question answerer three years running plus best cut lawn by the HOA. I am not affiliated in any way with Microsoft so don't go running to them if you mess up your computer.

Here is fifty eleven things to click on that is highly dependent on the language set on the computer and which is likely changed by Microsoft since I wrote this. The instructions are also highly general and in no way specific for your actual problem."

And the extra costs to support a feature I never use.

For me it's mostly the executive load of making an appointment. With long hair my wife could trim it and now with short hair I can cut it myself with a hair trimmer.

I agree with you, it would legitimate the results though. Not that I believe that Reddit cares about that either.

Exactly who knows!?
But in all seriousness, considering how large the company seems to be with outsourcing and multiple internal levels of support, it sounds like a juicy target both for ransomware and industrial espionage.