I used to have high regards on how things work here. When you heard about services in developed countries, you think of efficiency, speed and a little bit of brains, at least. But it is not what it seems to be actually. At least not for me anymore. Such impression is beginning to erode due to my countless experience of getting services here. In fact, the very fact that I needed services and more of them now doesn't bode well to how things are actually functioning here.
First of all, I am really stressed. There are so many things that pressed the right buttons in intimidating me lately.
1. When I first arrived, my luggage was missing. I am not attributing this to the people here but what happened after that really got me infuriated. To file for a compensation, it has to go though layers and layers of paperwork, emails and telephone calls. I finally got my compensation after 6 weeks.
2. I tried to sign up for a mobile phone contract; I was told it would be processed in three working days. I signed up on 1 December last year. It's already 10 January 2007, today. I called them up two weeks ago and was told that it would be solved by the next day. Till today, I have no news from them. I never bothered to call anymore. So, my hope for a new Nokia phone is now in the backburner.
3. My 9-month old laptop went berserked and decided to quit on me in this most critical time of the term with loads of assignments. Thank God Wolfson College has a good PC:student ratio and the number of computers here looks more than the students of the college. The system is powerful and it is just perfect; so I get to work on my assignments, including blogging for the time being. But that's not what I want to blog about though. I called HP last Friday to pick up my lappie. Empty promises, nothing but empty promises. I was promised that they would collect the lappie on Monday, i.e two days ago. Fine, people do get lazy at times, so I overlooked and settled for the next day. On the next day, they have yet to call me after 4pm, so I called instead to inquire. The buggas actually forgotten and I was glad that I was proactive. So, they arranged it to collect it the next day, i.e today. How bad could things be from here? I woke up pretty damn early to settle all my printing in the Engineering department and submitted my assignment that was due today, hurried back to my college and waited for Mr. Collector from HP. No sign of turning up. It was until 11am that I sounded the alarm bell in mind and decided to leave for the PC room and wrote HP an email if they were ever going to arrive at my doorstep.
When I finished doing that and went back to my room, a yellow slip was tugged in between the door gap. It was Mr Collector! 'Sorry We Missed You!'. I was like...What! You $^%$^&^%&^ made me wait for the whole damn morning and now just left without giving me a call that you arrived. I felt that it was my fault to be such an absolute idiot and left the room before noon. The agreement was anytime from 9.30am to noon. The note was written at 11.30am and I returned to my room at 11.35am. So it was my fault. But was it entirely my fault, I asked again. O well, HP already took down my mobile number and they could have called me if I was not around in my room. I could be in the toilet which is just next to the room, for goodness sake! I nearly blew my top when I saw the hideous looking note on the door.
Now I have to wait for the next day which would be another day of locking myself up in the room. Going by the mobile contract trend, I wonder if my lappie is ever going to be fixed. I am not so ambitious in thinking so far ahead though. I would rather hope for something less of a miracle to happen and that my lappie be collected first!
Did I present to you how pissed am I now. I should be working on my assignments now but I decided to vent my anger here. I guess it makes me feel better to release abit of steam here than in the assignments.
To be fair, I have also received good services around here especially those that I experienced from the university. I have no issues with the university. It's just great here, the service standard here is the epitome to how things should run in the entire UK service industry.
At some point of time, I am not sure if I should be thankful that I am having these problems in an English speaking country than if I had them in Japan. Communicating and trying to get my message across in Japan would have been entirely frustrating too. But at least based on my experiences with them, they are smarter (no malice intended). I mean at least I could communicate effectively here, including telling my piece of mind to Mr. Collector tomorrow that their service is just perposterous and ridiculously not user-friendly at all!
I took a deep breath, sat back and try to recollect my emotions. Then I asked myself, have my expectations grown ever since I came here and experienced the high quality service in Cambridge, or have I been spoilt by Japan with the speed of things, or have I been an ignorant fool that things in Malaysia weren't that bad after all, or have I suddenly become more and more of a perfectionist. Then I looked out the window and thought, hmm...maybe I should leave this for my blog readers to answer....
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5 comments:
Guess it's those days where things turned awful,coupled with your impatientness n the twist of events ie;lappie,baggage etc u r just feeling the suddenned blue at the moment.
Cheer up dude!think on the brighter side
for a comprehensive, mature understanding of life, it is always beneficial to have a taste of the best, the worst and something in between. malaysia's always in between... there's really nothing outstanding, from either end. we're neither the worst nor the best. the truth remains that with greater comfort lie greater expectations. the human heart is unsatiable, ever grasping for something more.
calculus intrigues me as it seems to capture the very essense of this argument. if the y-axis were to be the level of comfort we experience and the x-axis were to be time, our perception of satisfaction is never equal to the level of the y-axis, rather it is the slope thereof; its differential.
the following points are generalisations, and as with all other generalisations, there are exceptions.
1. to get tangled up in a bureaucratic mess is an absolutely british thing to do. the typical brit, or westerner for that matter, is so caught up in his formalities, formulae and mental axioms that he would sometimes see the obvious right in front of him. the opposite of this rigidity is our malaysian flexibility. both characteristics are a double edged sword. extreme rigidity results in the 6 week compensation wait, for example. extreme flexibility, on the other hand, degenerates into that infamous malaysian "tidak apa" attitude and traps one into that mire of mediocrity, ever unable to attain true greatness.
2. when it comes to people who work in mundane jobs such as processing claims or applications, it really doesn't quite matter which country; the industry is always the same. or rather, competence is secondary to attitude. east asians generally have a do-or-die attitude to whatever job they have, but where people have it easy, service type jobs typically give crap results. now, another problem is specific to malaysian applications, and it is that of negative discrimation no thanks to waves of malaysians who routinely applied for free mobiles, bought insurance for the phones, lodged false police reports regarding their "theft", and pocketed free, latest mobiles year after year. as a result, malaysians are one of the blacklisted nationalities as far as free mobile applications in the UK are concerned. even if the blacklist is indeed defunct by now, to list "malaysian" as one's nationality in the application form would still ring some alarm bells, hence the likely lack of enthusiasm in processing. procedures are procedures; professionalism is professionalism but one can never ever understate the importance of the human factor in most tasks, particularly those which do involve human decision making.
3. ditto the first 5 sentences in para 2. mister notebook service guy won't die or starve if he underperforms, so who cares? whereas his china counterpart wouldn't want to lose his job, however mundane and unglamourous, to hundreds of equally qualified comrades who are waiting out at the door to replace him if he ever quits or is fired for underperformance. human nature being human nature, competition is necessary to bring out the best.
in conclusion, there is no such thing as heaven on earth, and there never will be. we've just got to make the best of what we get. with great blessing/power comes greater responsibility. looks like the skills acquired from badgering complacent paper pushers to do their work on time will always be relevant, sometime and someplace! :)
Emmm, understood your situation (damn soundly). I think, it's the indvidual that matters. Perhaps, it was a coincidence you had encoutered with those bunch of people who lacked "Customer Service Relationship Management"
how true that Mr/Ms Ethereality statements...maybe think of this situation u facing now in a christian way,probably God is giving u a test & to become someone even better than what u are now....i'm sure when God get u into this, He will make sure help u get through it...just be patient & pray.
Thanks for all your kind comments and critical thoughts. Today we had a class with the MIT lecturer. He quipped something that struck a chord to what we are talking about here. '...the global service industry is on the path to collapse. It is now in bad shape and needs to reconstruct or rot itself to the ground!'
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