Customer support done so badly

I asked for help

I relate below a totally failed customer support activity that I requested from my DNS provider on Friday, because I was frustrated by their inertia, their exacerbation of the problem, and as a result, it put my week out that it is taking some time to get back on an even keel.

I logged a support ticket because a change the firm had done on the backend took away the presentation of my corporate Blogger website using a domain name, they had provided me. The change was implemented in mid-March, but I just did not seem to have the time to address it, so I removed all references to my corporate website on all published material until I could properly review the issue.

Asking with clear concerns

My support ticket was written thus:

I had my company blog at http://www.forakin.com/ which is a redirection for http://forakin.blogspot.com for years until a change was made to your back-end systems.

Since that change, anytime I visit my blog, I get the following error:

Welcome to www.forakin.com, a site recently created using our clustered Linux web hosting. If you’re seeing this page instead of your website, please replace or remove the default index.php from your public_html directory. (Screenshot attached.)

I have no idea what to do here because I did not have to create an index.php file when I created my website and the redirection from here, I believe it is a file in the TSOHost environment which I did find but still could not resolve the issue.

Note: Also, I use forakin.com as my Microsoft Azure domain with my email managed within Azure / Microsoft 365 and cannot afford for any changes to the domain to affect my email services.

Expectation: How do I get my Google Blogger website to show again when referenced as forakin.com?

The error I reported.

Think like your customer

The error I was getting when I visited my website, I could not fix even after I accessed the said file on the hosting service portal, this apart from the fact that I did nothing in Linux or with the service provider apart from entering a few DNS records to redirect my custom domain to my blog.

Fundamentally, the change had no guidance for users who do not normally tinker with Linux and all I wanted was for this issue to be fixed.

However, despite the narrative of my issue, the note attached was quite particular, whilst I wanted a problem solved, I had a core dependency on that domain name, the business email that I could not afford to lose, and I clearly stated that I do not want any changes made that would affect my email service.

Despite my expectation of a resolution, my thinking was my note would stay paramount in the mind of whoever took up the issue to help resolve it. I was wrong.

This matter goes to the heart of understanding what it is to give customer support in the Information Technology and Computing world. It is not enough to understand and comprehend the problem being stated with the wherewithal to resolve the issue. Much as a customer will have expectations, once a concern or requirement is raised, nothing whatsoever should be done to impair the quality of service the customer is trying to retain as the issue is being resolved.

A fix or a fudge?

On Saturday morning, I received an update from a customer support person, and this is what he said:

Thank you for getting in touch on that matter!

I checked your account, and it seems like the problem was coming from the DNS conflict, I fixed it, but could you clarify from where should the website load from?

Could you please confirm where you host your emails because it currently shows they are with Outlook?

If you have any further questions or concerns, we will remain available.

There is a lot in this response that might not be seen without carefully reading it. He said, “I fixed it.” No, it was not fixed, and his assessment that it was a DNS conflict was strange because no changes had been done to my custom DNS records for well over a year, and everything website and email was working until the change in mid-March when I lost access to my website.

I already stated where I was loading my website from in my support ticket, all he had to do was click on both URLs to see what results. He had somewhat attempted a quick fix, with no attention to detail or verification of the consequence of his action.

Indeed, my emails were hosted with Outlook, he would have seen the DNS records indicating that and that service was what I expressly said should not be affected by what they do.

Like I said, my website was not working after the fix, rather it was showing another error. However, what also happened was I was no longer able to receive emails on my business email account. Much as I was able to send from it with my email client, no emails were received.

Hey! I’ve lost my email service

I updated my support ticket with my new observations and concerns, this time asking that they either revert what was done or resolve everything and particularly the email service that was lost.

Another customer support agent, instead of reading what I had written, responded on Monday morning:

In terms for the emails related to forakin.com, you need to contact Microsoft as they are the email providers and not us.

They should be able to assist you a lot further into this as they will see any errors that appear.

If you need further assistance, feel free to contact us.

Not our problem, dear

Well, no, I do not need to contact Microsoft when in fact it is what your customer support agent did that lost me the email service. I was incandescent with rage but had to keep my cool as I tried to assess the situation.

I visited the Microsoft 365 portal to check my domain configuration and what I could see on the Microsoft end was that it was expecting to read some DNS records from my DNS hosting provider, and it was getting something else. Their assessment of the issue was that some DNS entries were wrong.

Therefore, if a member of staff with my DNS hosting provider was tinkering with settings on my account and fixing a DNS conflict that until I received the first response was working, the responsibility for the issue lay with my DNS hosting provider, but what I was met with was lethargy, inertia, and a total lack of consideration. It was in all terms a total failure of change management and customer support.

Maybe it’s just the culture there

This was further complicated by the fact that no one could determine what the supposed DNS conflict was nor was there any documentation of exactly what was done that could be reverted.

The culture in the organisation was becoming evident.

1. A lack of controls in the organisation that documents or considers customer engagement, apart from the fact that they had withdrawn telephone support for either live chat or support ticket registration.
2. A lack of attention to detail where customer concerns are paramount, requiring the customer to be first informed of the consequences of any action to be taken before the action is implemented
3. A poor grasp of comprehending and reading up on all the material and communication between the customer and any agent before acting or responding.
4. No proper escalation processes where a poorly executed activity can be reviewed and remediation towards reversion or forward resolution.
5. A tendency to engage in back-and-forth communication without any sense of responsibility for their actions.
6. Any absence of enduring team cohesion that allows other agents to know what one agent has done, especially, when that action has caused other issues.
7. In fact, I did also write to the head of the organisation about my issue, well, they just pay lip service to customer service and enablement, but the reality is far from the intentions expressed.

I provided additional information with screenshots and data that needed to be entered in my custom DNS records table, even though from my perspective on the DNS provider’s portal, everything seemed correct.

However, I could not persuade my DNS provider’s agents to enter these DNS records, they all were requiring me to clean up after the mess that one of their agents had created by totally ignoring my note.

By Tuesday morning, it became evident that whatever I was trying to do on the DNS provider’s portal was not working. This might have been because that part of the portal even though it was displaying my changes was not saving the same changes.

For all that time, Microsoft 365 was indicating to me that no changes were being observed from the entries on my DNS provider’s side to match the entries it was expecting.

Not all rotten apples

Eventually, I initiated a new Live Chat session where the very helpful agent said the DNS records were propagating, but when I checked, they were not the expected DNS records. I was then able to persuade the agent to enter the 5 records needed to restore my email service and device registration service in Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

Once those were done on Tuesday afternoon, my email service was restored and by then I was no more interested to getting my corporate website back up on forakin.com, I could not go through another ordeal like that, I began the process of moving my corporate website to forakin.org that is hosted by another DNS provider.

Now that I think of it, I might well consider moving forakin.com to this other DNS provider.

It was all unnecessary

It must be said, this issue could have been resolved on Monday morning if any of the customer support team cared. I provided them with the full details of the DNS records that needed to be entered to be matched to what Microsoft 365 was expecting and each time, rather than act, they asked me to do it myself.

A few hours after my email service was restored, I got another update on my support ticket asking for the DNS entries I had already provided and this after the update that the issue had been resolved. What did I say earlier, they do not read the full thread of communication before they act, it is appalling.

This time I had to update the subject and state as the first line in my response, “Please, close this ticket.” After which I explained why it should be closed. It is evident that if an organisation cannot take responsibility for the actions they have undertaken, it is quite unnecessary waiting for an apology from them.

It is my hope that customer service in that organisation improves, however, if I have to face another technical support situation, I will rather take my custom elsewhere. No one should ever have to face the level of ineptitude I experience, and this is the case with someone who has been in the industry for over 3 decades. I hate to think of what people who have no IT experience have to face, it just does not bear thinking of.

Personal website

Business website – I hope to start putting more up there.

I'll take the service, please and keep the compensation

A failure to do

Compensation: the refuge of service providers after the efficient display and demonstration of ineptitude and incompetence in the provision of an advertised and vaunted service you first can afford and pay for, that they have so failed to deliver, you are left both speechlessly askance and quite livid with rage.

You might think I am on the roll with regards to compensations in December, for at first, it was with my laundry service provider, LaundryHeap, with a laundry and dry-cleaning turnout of 24 hours, picking up and dropping off your clothes at your home.

A willingness to fix

When I used that service in mid-November, 20 out of 58 clothing items were returned in the service window, the rest involved a back-and-forth that ran for 4 additional days with a £10.57 compensation offered at that time.

Blog - Laundered to distress by Laundryheap

I was utterly dissatisfied even after using the service for years, and I resisted posting a review apart from what I posted on my blog, keeping my counsel and holding my peace. Then out of the blue on the first of the month, Laundry Heap contacted me to refund the full-service charge for 38 clothing items that were not returned within the 24-hour service window. It amounted to £184.50.

My globetrotting baggage

Moving on, we had a situation where I arrived in Cape Town 40 hours before my baggage which from the assurance of the captain on my Air France flight from Paris to Cape Town indicated our delayed departure was to allow for baggage to be loaded on the plane. The aircraft left Paris with less than half the baggage of the passengers that boarded the plane when we stood at the carousel a few minutes before 23:00 local time.

Blog - In flights of intermittent piquancy

We learnt that baggage had been left behind before each of us got emails from Air France informing us of the possible circulatory route our baggage would take to be reunited with us by Sunday, we having arrived on Friday night. After filling in a Property Irregularity Report with information of where to deliver my baggage, if and when it arrives in Cape Town, I took to Twitter to follow up on the progress.

My baggage made it to Amsterdam on Friday night and then was put on board a plane in the morning from Amsterdam to Cape Town, to arrive just an hour short of midnight. I heard nothing more and could not contact the office in Cape Town nor leave a message as their mailbox was full.

A disorderly organisation

I assumed my baggage was already in Cape Town, so I made for the airport and through some security to a desk where I was informed my baggage was on the way to my Cape Town address without anyone having contacted me to update me of that situation. It transpired my baggage was still on the airport premises, I collected my 3 suitcases and signed for them.

I then returned to Twitter to remonstrate, wherein I was given a link to claim some sort of compensation. You wonder what for? The T-shirt, the pair of shorts and the sandals, I got to just not be overdressed for summertime in Cape Town?

Then I got a call from Air France to my South African number where I was offered a maximum compensation of £85 and 8,000 Air Miles. I could quibble because the last time Air France forgot to keep my baggage on the same itinerary and schedule as I was, they gave me 10,000 Air Miles and it was a journey to Bucharest and I was reunited with my baggage within 24 hours. But for the fact that I was a premium rate customer with a Platinum Flying Blue card meant this was throwing pennies at me to compensate for pounds of distress. I was unimpressed, we soldier on.

An apartment apart in chaos

Then, we are left wondering what attracted us to the apartment we are staying in for 28 nights in Cape Town because we were no doubt taken in by the glossy pictures and that was about it. The letting agents that injected themselves into the process after we booked the apartment on Hotels.com now have to earn their keep because they have heretofore been sitting pretty and indolent.

The agent who was supposed to meet us to show us around the apartment was not available because of car trouble, then on entering the apartment, we began to see that so many things were not as stated in the details we read about this place. There is a lift in the building even as the material suggests there isn’t as there is a bathtub in the bathroom when we were informed it only had a shower. How do you miss that, except if you have never bothered to visit the property under management?

No cooks ever cooked here

There is no microwave oven in a 21^st Century apartment leaving you wondering if anyone who ever stayed here ever ordered or takeaway or even tried to cook anything with the aluminium pots that had no handles and lids without holders, it got worse when I tried to prepare a salad and there were no kitchen knives.

The wardrobe with two 1.5m rails only had 3 clothes hangers, and though the apartment had a washer/dryer with a 7kg/4kg weighting for the respective cycles, there was no clothesline and there is no vacuum cleaner in the apartment. Considering this is the 5^th apartment we are staying in since we started visiting Cape Town, even we are left astonished that this is the first time we have ever had to complain about where we are staying.

We always try to create a home away from home experience with fully domesticated living, but this is at a stretch difficult in this apartment without considerable remediation that the agent has informed us the owner of the apartment would sort out, we just do not know when and it is the 5^th day of our stay.

Get it right the first time, thanks

Now, this is my view of the issue of compensation, I do not need it, what I need is the service I paid for delivered to the standard and better of what was advertised without my need to complain, except to be appreciative and commend whoever and the service provider for their excellent service.

In fact, you can never fully compensate for a failed or below par service apart from paying back everything with a little more for the distress and inconvenience suffered. In my view, LaundryHeap went the furthest in the compensation stakes, Air France has not acquitted themselves well for the fact that the captain knew he was leaving France without our baggage and that it took that long to get things back to me.

Then 6 hours after I collected my baggage from the airport, I received a message from Air France indicating my baggage had arrived in Cape Town and will be delivered to my address. Honestly!

As for our apartment, we are expecting to be surprised if any of the issues were raised gets sorted out. One thing the agency and the owner of this apartment should avoid is a negative review because I will be honest and that is just the way things are.

Thought Picnic: In aid of posterity

The absence of skill for success

I spent 6 hours attempting to remediate something I had planned to do for not more than 90 minutes and this was fielding a request for assistance in which I was asked to cast an eye on some activity for its correctness and suitability for the purpose intended and it failed woefully at both.

If my patience was tested, my calmness did little to betray it. Something in my nature demanded the kind of endurance with keeping my counsel in the hope that our engagement which had not fully delivered the outcomes might just bring into focus the functional inadequacies in my quarry and the desire to do better.

Almost hopeless at method

I needed to review the meanings of two words, ineptitude: the lack of ability or skill, and incompetence: the inability to do something successfully. We do have the tendency to conflate the meanings and consider them synonyms, but they are very far apart in terms of context.

My interlocutor had planned to do some things or imagined things had been done and even with following a clear set of instructions failed at implementing what he intended. I could say ineptitude contributed to the inability to use the instruction set and the result was incompetence because whatever he set out to do was not accomplished and he could not understand how and why it was not.

A call upon absent ability

Just to imagine that someone has been bestowed to such responsibility having convinced the unlearned that they are capable and there is no challenging assessment or scrutiny of their abilities apart from the pressing demand to fulfil requirements that within that setting they know can be done but have no wherewithal to achieve.

It is a different thing if, in some way, there was a prospect that growth was possible, but my doubts outweigh my hopes. I am lumbered with a sense of kindness, maybe also of duty to ensure that whoever might replace my friend will not be assessed by the propensity to the maladroit of their predecessor by reason of any form of similarities that might prejudice the process.

The significance of posterity

At one time, I thought I was doing it for him and it might well save his job and lengthen whatever employment contracts he has if he can learn from this, but posterity is of pertinent consequence, the ground we lay determines how we are succeeded and the legacy should be praise at your departure rather than relief that what you have done has not laid the situation to ruin if the opportunity presented itself.

Yet, we have not all been so perfect, we have made errors sometimes too shameful to recall but quite defining of our careers and the determination to better and strive for excellence. It is not a hopeless situation, just one where the prerequisites for hope are not very present.

Blog - Showing courtesy to others' time

Jabbing a finger at the idiots of Downing Street

Any wonder he won?

When Boris Johnson won the general election in December 2019 on the promise codified in the “Get Brexit Done”, he must have thought he had won the lottery along with the immunity that gives power the impunity to do anything with an 80-seat majority.

With much regret, we grudgingly congratulated him and wished him well as we licked our wounds for the second time of voting for the sadly unelectable Jeremy Corbyn.

We broke for Christmas and ushered in the New Year then left the EU for a transition period on the 31^st of January, just as a menace brewing in China leading to radical measures was growing global tentacles. An epidemic evolving into a global pandemic was about to unleash itself on mankind, but Boris Johnson could not be bothered.

As an island nation bewitched by the populist sweet-talk of taking back control of our laws, our sovereignty and our borders, you began to realise it was all empty talk because none of that was done as the coronavirus cut a swathe through northern Italy and we saw the restrictions being deployed in China and South Korea, but scratch all that.

As if life really mattered

The UK now stands 5^th with 46,853 reported deaths from COVID-19 for the simple reason that in acquiring power the government of Boris Johnson seemed to have forgotten that it comes with great responsibility, the responsibility for lives. I believe that was his mind when on the 12^th of March, he said to the nation, “I must level with you, level with the British public, more families, and many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.” [Source: COVID19LIVE.Info]

Blog - Thought Picnic: The vulnerable to be martyred to the Coronavirus in the UK

Whether he is ready to admit it or not, the government has still not found the way to grapple with this pandemic, as they were advised on the 21^st of September to put the whole nation in lockdown but he has prevaricated and delayed with hubristic inertia, indecisiveness, and absence of resolve that we are now to go into a 4-week lockdown that does not portend an end to the crisis.

Failing on all counts

This pandemic thrives on crowds, close contact, and closed spaces, to tackle it, we need not just capacity for testing, but a prompt turnover of the testing results that feeds back into a tracking and tracing system, none of which are working despite the billions of pounds shovelled off to friends of the powerful.

We are at this point because despite all that is obvious around the world and in the territories of our neighbours, as Sir Keir Starmer with forceful conviction, “They failed to learn. They failed to listen. And they failed to lead. The result is tragic – but all too predictable.” [The London Economic: Sunak’s ‘name is all over’ delaying lockdown claims Starmer saying ‘result is tragic’]

They have consistently failed to learn time and time again, as populists, they will only listen to convenience and have to be railroaded by circumstances to take tough decisions late, much like shutting the stable door after the horses have bolted and rather than lead, they have had to follow disaster, defeat, death, when they should have prevented it.

If only leadership were just about Brexit and populist postulations, however, it cannot always be an easy ride, for when it is called upon by situation or circumstance, those in power must have the capacity and the ability to meet the challenge, or lives will be lost. We have not had this kind of loss of British lives, not since we were in WWII. Ineptitude has been compounded with unbelievable incompetence never seen in Whitehall or Downing Street, this is going to the record books.

Blog - Opinion: Of our PM, cometh the hour, cometh no man

Can anything rid us of the grip of this unconscionable kakistocracy? I’m afraid, this blog offers nothing more than a review of Boris Johnson’s unimaginative, talentless, gormless, ill-fitting cabinet of discarded woodwork. We’ll do some thinking elsewhere.

 

 

#Coronavirus: Can commendable competence emerge from astonishing incompetence in the UK?

It’s damning incompetence all round

Every day appears to be overcast with a Coronavirus cloud, in the news, in our cities, in our limitations and expectations.

In the middle of this pandemic what is becoming obvious is the need for competence in government with the wherewithal to grapple with a complex and complicated issue that is presently impacting on lives in unprecedented ways. [The Irish Post - Virus crisis reveals Boris Johnson's astonishing incompetence]

It is literally impossible to deploy the kind of glib political spin that has been the stock in trade of the people who constitute our current UK government headed by Boris Johnson. People need answers to questions to which the usual obfuscation or verbosity with sophistry will not pass the muster. [Yahoo! News - Coronavirus: Two-thirds of Brits think the government has badly handled COVID-19 testing]

The numbers are real people

Today, the UK registered the 4^th highest global death toll of 569 in the last 24 hours of people who succumbed to the COVID-19 virus bringing the 7^th most deaths of 2,925 in a country that comes the 8^th in the number of confirmed cases of 34,006. In the numbers and percentages game, there is a fatality rate of 8.6% and a recovery rate of 0.5% where China and South Korea have recovery rates of 93.7% and 58.4% respectively. [COVID19INFO.live]

Screen captured from https://covid19info.live/

To suggest that the management of the pandemic in the UK has been abysmal would almost be forgiving, look at the statistics as each an individual, each person named and their survivors accounted for constitutes probably in a majority of cases an avoidable tragedy visited upon UK residents and citizens by their own leaders.

Before we lose the context of what is happening in our country, we need to refresh our minds with what Boris Johnson said in early March.

Is death so insignificant to them?

“That’s where a lot of the debate has been and one of the theories is, that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures.”

“I must level with you, level with the British public, more families, and many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.”

Blog - Thought Picnic: The vulnerable to be martyred to the Coronavirus in the UK

These are the people who when the Prime Minister allowed the COVID-19 to move through the population with taking draconian measures like the lockdown, took it on the chin and died before their time.

You can only wonder how many more will take it on the chin before the government really does come to grips with this pandemic by scaling up tests for the infected and all frontline staff acquires and distributes PPE to all that need it at the point of contact with the public, and ensure hospitals are adequately equipped with ventilators at the point of need.

I still hope for better

I want to believe that this government can rise to the occasion as they are the ones in charge with the responsibility for which they must ultimately be held accountable. Their need to be truthful, honest and scrupulous cannot be overstated or we would lose confidence in them. [Reuters - Under pressure, UK government promises 100,000 daily coronavirus tests]

People are dying daily and much as one can readily blame them for criminal carelessness and the recklessness that has unnecessarily endangered lives our of lethargy, inertia and unpreparedness, one would hope they are more aware of the gravity of the task ahead of them to find the means to excel beyond their heretofore cack-handed gross ineptitude. I wish them all the success and there can be no refuge in excuses anymore.

Opinion: How much longer can we endure Theresa May and her #Brexit ineptitude?

She never could do it

News that Theresa May the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland had decided to delay the meaningful vote on her much-vaunted deal from Europe for #Brexit was hardly a surprise.

It is depressing and a depressing state of affairs that a nation that in the last century was one of the leading lights of world leadership, diplomacy and political nous is in a state of ineffectiveness, utterly inept, incapacitated by infirmity, deformed in prospect.

I have never had the confidence that Theresa May could pull off #Brexit with any credibility or ability, she mastered and spearheaded a negotiating tactic that projected hubris and bluster, sending bombastic blowhards to Europe with delusions of grandeur convinced in the exceptionalism of the UK. Her powers of persuasion were deployed as dogged obstinacy, tinned eared in her hope that brinkmanship would yield a result.

A living insanity

For 29 months since she assumed office, she has followed the same course, mouthed the same mantras, repeated the same talking points and achieved nothing. Paraphrasing Albert Einstein, "The definition of this #Brexit insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

It is insanity that bedevils this #BrexitShambles, she can win no support within her party and she has found no way to unite the country behind anything she has to offer apart from uniting us in disgust and revulsion of her deal.

Theresa May had ample opportunity and scope, she could have on becoming premier gone for a grand coalition to work on this #Brexit issue. Rather, she triggered Article 50 completely clueless of what she could achieve, then gambled away her majority on an ill-judged election before losing two Brexit Secretaries of State, a Foreign Minister and scores more from her cabinet.

Neither up nor down

Dysfunction and derision have become the hallmarks of this government hellbent of driven the country headlong into perdition on the force of ideology above reason. The Pound Sterling in the wake of foolhardiness not seen since the Grand Old Duke of York became a nursery rhyme of the utmost ridicule.

The problem is not in Europe, the EU-27 countries have already agreed the deal she wants to renegotiate with them, they all know it is the fact that she cannot persuade, convince, cajole, cudgel or bribe enough in the House of Commons to buy into her plan. She is an abject failure and if any Tory is ready to put the country above self-interest, it is time to pension off this apology wrecking the country and chart a new course in leadership and in Europe.

Stop this #Brexit nonsense now

The #BrexitShambles has sucked all productivity, progress and oxygen out of our national effectiveness and the ability for us to take our place in the comity of nations where we belong. There is no Kumbaya of rich pickings after #Brexit.

We belong in Europe, the best deal we could have we already have in Europe and we need to send better representatives than those of the ilk of Nigel Farage to Europe who would attend meetings, constructively engage our partners and win compromises, concessions and consensus that gives of the best of what Europe can offer.

It is time to end the leadership tragedy of Mrs Theresa May and consign her to the scrapheap of history. She has done enough damage already.

South Africa: Is this a black empowerment timebomb?

Conversations, many

South Africa offered me a variety of opportunities for meeting people, making conversation, but mostly, there was much to observe and from that as an outsider draw some conclusions about the society the country projects.

The most engagement was on my Uber cab rides to and from work, from the Gautrain station or out for social engagements. Of the probably 40 or so Uber trips I had, there was probably one uninteresting and disinterested driver, I should have sat in the back and occupied myself with a more interactive reading material, my eyes darting from left to right as I read.

Where our journeys were short, it was quite honorific to have the Uber cab drivers express the desire to meet me again so we could have a longer chat. By osmosis and general interest, I seemed to know a lot about South Africa and its current affairs, along with seemingly alternative viewpoints to the events that occupied the newswires in the time I was there.

Signs and realities

However, it appeared I was only getting one perspective of things until last Saturday I witnessed both an interesting and an alarming incident on the concourse of the Johannesburg Park Gautrain station.

I had just missed the opportunity to go on the Soweto tour and so returned to the station to take the train back to Sandton Gautrain station. At the entrance, I had already seen that the next train was in 29 minutes time, it meant I had just missed a train.

I could have loitered around the station, but there is a sense of safety once you are beyond the ticket barriers. The seating on the concourse is really a design malfunction, aesthetically pleasing to the eye but uncomfortable to sit on, the two metal slats are angled for slouching for the able-bodied and literally unusable for those with assisted mobility or any other kind of impairment or strength, age or nature.

Malfunction feeding resentment

What transpired was the electronic signals on the concourse were not updating to tell exactly when the next train would arrive. What I saw as 29 minutes at the entrance was reading a minute on the concourse and it did not change for minutes.

A white lady then made to ask one of the guards on the concourse when the next train would arrive, the guard indicated it would be about 26 minutes. She then when on to ask why the electronic sign was reading different from the expected time. The guard had no answers, but she suggested the lady check the timetable, a cleaner who was chatting to the guard before the white lady interrupted buttressed the point of the view of the guard.

At that moment, the white lady flared up and rudely told that cleaner that she was not invited into the conversation, and so she should mind her own business. At which point everyone else on the concourse waiting for the next train was alerted to the fact that this might degenerate into an unholy fracas.

This must be one of many

The guard trying to reason with this gradually obstreperous lady, tried to aver that the timetable took precedent if there were problems with the electronic indicators, somehow, the context of the problem took a strange twist when the white lady said, “No problem? We don’t run the country anymore and the very simple things you people cannot make work, everything is a mess.”

Now, that caught my attention as the white lady walked away in apparent irritation at not being taken more seriously and began talking across to the other platform in mock rage and annoyance as if there as someone else listening to her grievance. Well, there was no one there, it was a loud soliloquy looking like the onset of some mental disorder.

At which point, I surmised that this was pent-up Afrikaner resentment being let out, apparently triggered by the frustration of not being in control or being able to control, situation, event or direction.

This in my view could not be the only place where resentment was festering and ready to be blurted out at any sign of ineptitude, incompetence, misdeed or malfunction. In my over three weeks in South Africa I had seen much of this with the impunity, the contempt of institutions and the cack-handedness of the President in replacing the Finance Minister in the middle economic turmoil with a complete tyro, all for political expediency.

Distrust in the rainbow nation

The week before, a survey had suggested that South Africans of different races distrusted each other, there was very little social interaction between the races except in the workplace, in schools or in the shops. It goes without saying, that if there were people of the stature of Nelson Mandela in power with the requisite competence to run the government for the good of all South Africans, there would be little room for resentment.

Then, on my way back from South Africa, as we waited for the embarkation of our delayed flight, I got to talking with a couple that were off to Italy via Paris. They were travelling with three generations of the family, 11 in total, but grandpa and grandma were travelling business class and the others elsewhere.

They expressed frustration at the seeming rudderless direction of the government, the rapid decline in the value of the South African Rand and it was precipitous in the last week besides the fact that the Rand had lost 30% in value against the Dollar in the year 2015 alone.

Bantu education all over again?

However, what concerned him most was the affirmation action that was to encourage black empowerment and emancipation in South Africa. Now, the Bantu Education Act was a rotten Apartheid policy that provided not useful education to the black population as means of lifelong subjugation with no prospect of elevation in life.

“There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?” Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, the Dutch-born architect of Apartheid.

Yet, according to grandpa, during the struggle against Apartheid, the kids of the chief activists went to the best schools elsewhere, whilst the activists instigated the students left behind to burn their schools in protest and insurrection, leaving the students in the midst of the struggle bereft of education and consequently subjugated to the children of the activists who have returned to rule over the masses.

Marking up failures to pass through

He continued by saying, the affirmation system, whilst apparently giving opportunity to blacks to access education and qualifications, none of it appeared to test their aptitude, challenge their mental capacity or equalise their achievement with mainstream standards of education expected of anyone who has passed through an educational system from primary school through to the end of tertiary education.

He said many black South Africans in affirmation schemes were being given a full pass at 33% and conveyor belted through university to have a degree in three years whether they made the grade or not. Whilst I have no proof of this, on an anecdotal basis, I had seen many instances of people being trained and failing to perform when without direct supervision at hotels, in shops and elsewhere, it is concerning.

Dishonesty in presented qualifications

In my time in South Africa, after the scandal that broke in May when I was there that trains ordered from Spain for South African railways were not of the right specification, the speculation about the qualifications of the head of engineering of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) was confirmed.

Dr Daniel Mtimkulu had not studied at the university he said he attended and was not registered with the engineering body that was supposed to validate the qualifications that made him eligible for the role he was in. There no asking how he scaled through the due diligence processes of the people who interviewed him and promoted him to the role he assumed until he was found out when a procurement process was bungled creating serious embarrassment for all concerned.

Likewise, at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the COO was found to have misrepresented his qualifications by a public prosecutor whose institutional responsibility of oversight and regulation was ignored that other parties had to seek orders from the courts that enshrined and supported the authority of the public prosecutor.

Yet, integrity and honour were left by the wayside as the system appeared to give support and succour to dishonesty and fraud in the face of incontrovertible facts.

It does not augur well, at all

All of this will give cause for resentment amongst South Africans, especially when those in power seem to forget the great responsibility of nation-building and unifying a nation bequeathed them by the likes of Nelson Mandela for the politics of expediency and a descent to hedonism and opulence at the expense of the majority of South Africans that placed confidence in their government bringing lasting prosperous change into their lives.

One is appalled to say the least and it simply corroborates what I wrote in another blog titled, South Africa: Rubbish!

There are many stories in South Africa, but if the decline by indifference and indolence of government egged on by comfort oblivious of duty and attention to the purpose for which they were called to serve continues, Zimbabwe will be nothing compared to the disaster that is looking like the charted future of South Africa on this avoidable trajectory.

Thought Picnic: I don't know it all

Know why you do

In my line of work, I have variously found myself at loggerheads with others when it comes to problem resolution.

In context, it is important for me to understand why scenarios and circumstances present themselves before seeking a range of paths towards solutions that might resolve or eliminate the problem entirely.

A background in logic

There are many people who come from many walks of life and careers into the Information Technology profession taking up roles from design and architecture, through project and change management to support and much else.

It goes without saying that whilst many again are good at what they do when things are working like clockwork, the gaps in their fundamental knowledge of things begin to show when problems or emergencies arise.

There is a great user and support community out there from where one can get answers to a range of issues and problems. Yet, being able to craft a question properly or explain the scenario properly lends itself to other being able to visualise that setting and hopefully present ideas, opinions or clear solutions with steps to implement them to resolution state.

What an engineering mind gives you

My engineering background requires that there must be a purpose for any activity undertaken towards obtaining a solution. For me, it has to be logical, sensible, goal-oriented and capable of advancing knowledge and experience that any other similar scenario can literally use those steps as a template.

I do not work too well with trial-and-error, where purpose and goal are lacking that brawn rather than brain is used to hopefully get an unexpected outcome that then turns out to be the solution.

Because there is no particular method to trial-and-error problem resolution, stumbling upon a solution might well be fine, but you are left with whether you can backtrack and formularise those trial-and-error steps into a clear guide with full understanding of the problem, why the problem arose and what can be done to resolve it.

Reading the runes

I regularly peer through error logs trying to ‘divine’ from the logs what set of circumstances have presented the error observed from after. In doing that, I have to make more deductions over assumptions to begin to make headway.

In many cases, what the logs tell me gives me a sense of certainty about where things have gone wrong and possible insights as to how to right the situation. It is at this stage that I might become unpersuadable of alternative thinking if the logic and the reasoning is neither clear nor convincing.

In exasperation, I have sometimes walked away from a situation, though usually after I have shared my views and wait for the doubters to come to the conclusion that I might have been talking sense all along.

I don’t know it all

Yet, I have to be careful that this assuredness does not descend into intellection arrogance blinding me from other perspectives and perceptions. It is important to have a good idea of what knowledge you have, what knowledge you do not have and most pertinently be quick to retrace your steps where the absence of knowledge has precipitated into negligence or ineptitude.

Ignorance is fine if it means the quest for knowledge remains an ongoing pursuit with the view of mastering the rules established and then breaking new ground with new thinking and new perspectives.

Make allowances to learn anew

The constant quest for knowledge also limits the occurrences of negligence borne of not acquiring and using knowledge that is already available and the possible crime of ineptitude where wilfulness or hubris has made one almost too sure of a situation when it really is not the case.

Curiosity and a sense of precociousness are attributes one must always possess along with a questioning and challenging disposition. We can trust many things, but they should really only be trusted that much if they have also been verified as trustworthy – paraphrasing Ronald Reagan aphorism of “Trust, but verify.”

The inspiration for this blog came from Dr Atul Gawande’s first Reith Lecture in 2014 on The Future of Medicine, titled, Why Do Doctors Fail? [PDF Transcript]. In this lecture, he referenced an article Toward a Theory of Medical Fallibility [Subscription PDF], Samuel Gorovitz & Alasdair MacIntyre (1976) Published in The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 1976, Vol 1, No 1.