The Just Can't Wait Card Test

The Tale of Two Responses

It was eventually going to happen: a moment when I wielded my Just Can't Wait Card and was met with a Just Can't Be Bothered apathetic response. It was yesterday, just before 7:00 PM, when I alighted from the tram at Cornbrook, slightly pressed and hoping to make up the shortfall of my daily 10,000 steps.

As the breezy chill of the cold hit me, my bladder was at bursting point. I needed to go and go now. I turned into the entrance of one of the new developments and showed my card to the concierge, pleading to use a toilet on their premises.

She gave it no consideration, expressing the fear that if her manager found out a non-resident had used the toilet, she would be in trouble. Lady, the reason I came here was that I have a medical condition. I need the respite borne of your human kindness to allow me access. Surely, no manager of human provenance would think helping someone with a medical condition is so bad as to warrant a sanction. Common sense should prevail.

It fell on deaf ears; this conversation was going on as Brian was on the other end of the phone. She then said I should try the Co-op shop around the corner, to the front. The daring I once had of telling anyone who refused my entreaties that I would do whatever was pressing standing in front of them deserted me.

A Worrying Contingency

In the worst-case scenario, I would have wet myself and depended on my incontinence underwear to save my blushes in the 30-minute walk home. However, I did go to the Co-op shop and showed my Just Can't Wait Card. The lady at the till immediately summoned the store manager.

He explained that there were no customer-side toilet facilities, but he would take me into the back of the store and would have to wait outside until I had finished. The difference? Human compassion with a sense of humanity, rather than the readiness to sacrifice suffering on the altar of keeping the rules. More so, it is the presence of initiative, agency, and autonomy.

I had this large, disabled-equipped convenience to myself for as long as I wanted, and I was done in a few minutes. I thanked him profusely and made for home: relieved, succoured, and comforted by understanding human beings.

The Absence of Initiative

My earlier experience made me wonder: beyond manning the concierge desk, if any resident had suffered an emergency, would this concierge have risen to the situation to help? I would be quite doubtful, because she would be thinking her manager would upbraid her for any attempt at being human. It is best not to be distracted by the other descriptions that are present in what could be hitting below the belt.

My condition was manageable. I would not want to extrapolate on a more serious condition with someone else, who needed the presence of mind, the abundance of initiative, and just a modicum of courage, with the beating heart of humanity. How would our conscientious concierge, attending to her duties in the strict diktat of the letter of her contract of employment, have responded?

Names and Places

On getting home, I wrote to the management company of that apartment complex. I may not get a response, but what it takes to escalate this episode by averring to the press that there are certain establishments in this friendly Manchester city of ours, heartless apparatchiks are in customer-facing roles, oblivious to the charitable consideration of the disabled or those with medical conditions.

Heck, I have been in places where I had neither my card nor a Radar key, and I was allowed the use of their toilets and a place for respite before I continued on my way. The talk on this matter is not over yet. Names and places to come in due course.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Don't walk away from it

From a distance

One is hardly one to cut the sight of a knight in shining armour muscles hardly show nor to biceps present like Popeye after a can of spinach. My walk was much later than usual as I vegetated through the day indoors not bothering to take in the sun of the Bank Holiday Monday.

The lady was walking down a side road in a housing estate where one would expect her to be safe, but some male occupants of a car appeared to be harassing her. She was no shrinking Violet as she remonstrated loudly and refused to be cowed, that alone caught my attention that I stopped to see what was going on.

Check if unsure

The car then appeared to drive onto the pavement where she was that I decided to walk up towards the situation as the driver drove up to the junction as if to turn onto the main road, but then reversed as if they had not had their fill of intimidating the lady. This time, she threw something at them as I called out to see if she was alright.

Noticing me, she said I should take the registration of the car, in the heat of the moment when I should have taken a picture, I was not near enough and could only take a few alphanumerical characters before the car sped off. Obviously, not to distress her any more than she was, I from that distance, I checked that she was alright, to which she answered in the affirmative and I returned to my walk. I hope the men just go home rather than cause trouble for anyone else. 

Customer Complaint I: Not at Currys PC World, if I could help it

Bad, bad service

In many cases when businesses run into difficulty, a good investigation of the root cause might well lead to errors of omission or commission by the owners of the business or just bad customer service.

My evening has been quite eventful starting with an order that I placed with Currys PC World Ancoats Manchester. It was received and acknowledged with the opportunity to pick up my goods in an hour.

Almost 40 minutes after I placed my order, I got a phone call that my reserved order was on display in the showroom and that was the only one in stock and I could collect it for the same price as new.

That is just not on

There was no way I was going to let Currys PC World pass off unboxed goods as pristine, except where it was unboxed in my presence for me to check the contents before the leaving the store.

At worst, an offer could have been made to knock-down the price because the product was no more new, but none of that was forthcoming and their weak apologies for the situation left me feeling like they were in this to pull a fast one on me.

With staff like this

Where they could have had the initiative to have one delivered from a nearby store for me to pick up the next day, they were unpersuadable that it got to a point after knowing that I had shopped at Currys PC World for years and in fact, the high-specification laptop I am blogging from was acquired from the same shop last year, they were unhelpful.

Maybe hostile is not the word, but unfriendly, uncooperative and lacking in customer service decorum sums it up. With staff like this, you might well close shop.

I would rather take my money elsewhere and wait eons for my order than besmirch my dignity with a visit to Currys PC World again. It is little things like this, dishonest, underhand and reprehensible that could destroy a reputation built over decades, and just because staff fail to appreciate the responsibility they hold in an organisation.

Thought Picnic: Use your heads more than your hands

Cross, really cross

Miffed does not begin to describe my feeling a few days ago when a good week after I had asked agents to sort out the issues of my proof of address, I got another email asking for the same. I covered that issue in an earlier blog.

It simply highlighted they are done nothing since then and I was not ready to stand for any nonsense. Immediately, I despatched an email to those who matter and asked that the recommended agency be dropped from handling my business for their lack of initiative and understanding of my situation.

Sorted in stride

I was quite pleased that the matter was resolved within the hour as all the parties immediately communicated with each other and appeared to reach some sort of compromise.

My premise was that it had become an inconvenient distraction and it could begin to interfere with my ability to concentrate on what I had to do.

Besides assurances I got from my employer, the agency sent me two emails, one from my first contact apologising for the misunderstanding and putting it down to chaser emails and the other also apologising but adopting a line of defence I will deal with below.

Now, because I have always worked in Information Technology, I rarely buy the idea that computers are to blame for problems created by poorly implemented algorithms without the requisite simulation of human interaction but that is the problem with processes, they sometimes take away initiative when the process is not fit for purpose.

As for the other email, I was told I was granted a month of leniency to produce some proof of residence, it was a statement that made me all the more irksome.

Understanding not leniency

Why I would want leniency is beyond me, I have committed no offence nor have I been criminal; I have just returned to the UK and within 6 days gotten a job that has me travelling around Europe – is that a crime? There literally will be no time to set up and proof residence for the foreseeable future.

If anything, rather than understand the exceptional circumstances I presented them, I was left to run the gauntlet of a rote-serf devoid of the ability to as it were think outside the box and where incapable, escalate to better equipped and informed persons in the hierarchy they report to.

Nothing annoys me more than being offered the excuse, “I am only doing my job” don’t even get me going because it implicitly means, “I do not know how to think through the problems I am given, I have to be told what to do.”

Managers and others

That again was a situation I met at my hotel this morning after a night without wireless internet connectivity. I let it rest thinking someone will address the matter with urgency only to be met by a desk clerk who suggested the service was offered by another company and that they were not responsible, then crowning the nonchalance with the fact that the service is free.

O God, I am blessed beyond what words can describe that I will rarely be gainsaid, if ever. Thank you.

I made it clear that it was because of that free service that my team had considered booking 5 rooms and then an additional 3 rooms in his hotel. It was a critical service component that gave them the competitive advantage that he should not ignore or we will take our business and the remaining 12 days of stay elsewhere.

I then said if he could do nothing about it, I would rather speak to someone senior like the manager to which he responded he was the manager. Nothing could be further from the truth because no decent manager shirks responsibility to ensuring a critical though free service component remains unavailable without showing a sense urgency to resolve the same.

And then this too

Desk clerks are not all like that, the one I met earlier in the day allowed me to use their computer to send an urgent email to the office.

This afternoon before I left to find a café from where I wrote this, I did meet the manager and what a difference there is between a manager and desk clerk.

That same difference was evidenced at the office between managers who asked having seen us in a room before locking the door and cleaners who after cleaning the rooms and seeing us move in and out of the room still locked the doors without asking and disappeared. If people will just use their heads before their hands.

Exasperation! Breathe, Akin breathe.

419 Reasons to Like Nigeria - Get Involved!

Regaining our Nigerian Pride

Imagine the many times that our Nigerian pride has been punctured with having to defend ourselves against the stereotype of being known for email scams and related crimes that lead to the promulgation of the Article 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code.

The fight back has begun; we as a people and individuals know why we are proud to be Nigerians or to be associated with Nigeria through all sorts of relationships and interaction. Here is the background to this initiative.

419 Reasons to Like Nigeria

For Independence Day 2011, the 1^st of October 2011 which is the 51^st anniversary of Nigeria’s independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland we are going to town with 419 Reasons to Like Nigeria and Nigerians.

We are already halfway there with contributions from interested bloggers and social media users but there is much more to be done and hence this appeal for submissions.

The 419 Reasons To Like Nigeria initiative is being run in partnership with the 419 Positive Project which provides a multimedia portal for your views and opinions, however, this is what we want done.

Please do

• Send an email with your reasons, we usually require 5 but you can write as many as you want, to 419reasonsnigeria@gmail.com and remember to CC: volunteer@419positive.org
• Keep your reasons short, simple and “punchy.” [Forgive my lapse into clichés.]
• With your submission, if you have a blog or a Facebook page, please also include that detail.

Unusual and interesting reasons

Nigerians are known for their confidence, doggedness, resourcefulness, ability, optimism, adventurousness, culture, clout and much more – try for unusual and interesting reasons, think of selling the best of Nigeria and Nigerians to the world and in the process let us convert the negative connotations of the 419 stereotype to a positive of Nigeria’s decision to be the incubator and mover for lasting change amongst ourselves and to the world at large.

There is no time to waste in putting forth your reasons, they need to be collated and processed for publication well before the 1^st of October – we only have maybe 8 days at most.

Circulate this to as many as you can get to read and respond – in the worst case scenario, post your reasons as comments to this blog and they will be forwarded with full acknowledgement – this means you should provide a name as part of the text of your comment.

There are surely more than 419 Reasons to Like Nigeria and Nigerians.

Nigeria: A remark on the skills pool

A reflection of poor standards

It is rather unfortunate to say that the matter of the correct usage of English as presented in the blogs I have written about Babcock University might well be the tip of the iceberg of poor standards of education in Nigeria at all levels.

Our obtusely patriarchal setup stops people from questioning authority when wrong, prevents people from demanding accountability and quality in service provision and lulls people into a sense of complacency and acquiescence when the untenable is visited upon them.

This generalisation finds true in many circumstances especially with the case of many employees who have not been paid their wages for unreasonable lengths of time and have no recourse to any legal redress or actionable means to compel compliance.

Betters replacing Nigerians at home

The educational matter however touches on both formal and vocational elements of the delivery system such that in certain sectors of vocational discipline Nigerians are losing out to fellow West Africans who have mastered the skills better, have a sense of purpose and objective and are probably willing to undercut in terms of pay others who demand more but offer little.

Certain employers have found that many supposedly educated employees with graduate degrees in business and other disciplines do not have the requisite skills expected of people who have had university education.

The expectations of initiative, independence and minimal supervision of presumably expert personnel is dashed, that senior managers with the vision and direction for the organisation find themselves micro-managing their reports as if they are unskilled workers.

It is a sorry state of affairs if an employer has to resort to sympathetic employment of people who are kept on board for the fact that they have families to feed rather than because the employees are assets within the organisation earning their keep.

Education is the key

A complete overhaul of our educational system is required from ground up, from primary school education where pupils should be not be taught by rote but given the tools to comprehend the how’s and why’s of what they do in school.

Where teachers are not seen as demigods ready to mete out punishment with the whip as children are herded and nurtured as stubborn goats with the hope that the fear of violence might spur them on to grudging success.

The methods of measuring success do need to be re-evaluated, the brainiest kid should not be the one who has been able to regurgitate to paper what was in the notes verbatim but one that shows a clear understanding and comprehension of the requirements to answer the questions or provide solutions to problems creatively, sensibly and with a sense of original thought.

Children need childhood

Children need vibrant childhoods that allow for work and allow for play, the opportunity to read, explore, discover, question and debate without the fear of being rebuked because some age-old custom is being queried.

These fundamental childhood experiences are what give birth with ingenious and amazing minds and ensure that opportunity is equal and accessed with confidence later in life.

Our bad traditions of learning

Adults too have to adapt; inquisitiveness and precociousness should not be immediately be read as insubordination and the disrespect of authority, even adults can be wrong and they should be ready to admit that fact without the fear of losing face.

Engage, don’t ostracise; nurture and mould, don’t pigeon-hole; teach, don’t force-feed; lecture, don’t dictate and really, do let the children laugh – they do not have to suffer just because our childhoods were less colourful and lacking in excitement or adventure than what they might be ready to experience.

In this kind of atmosphere, no child will be left behind because the strengths of each particular child are known early in life allowing for the right guidance and help such that later in life they are aligned to the talents they possess rather than following from preconceived path of development that leaves them bereft of their abilities, personalities and sense of purpose.

The breed of child we need

Just imagine the number of students who on seeing the errors on the Babcock University website would have constituted a panel to edit, proofread and correct the mistakes being confident that they have a stake in the university without the fear of retribution but the expectation praise for doing the right thing.

We should be able to take on any institution for the sake of ensuring things are done properly, correctly and to a standard of quality that exhibits the presence of initiative, drive, ambition and vision.

Nigerian children can do this but only if they are nurtured in ways that allow us to become world-beaters in everything we do – it would not come with the kind of educational system we have now and the graduates being churned out of the universities today.

Tenerife tomorrow arranged by staff so good

Hard graft planning

It has been drama, disappointment and delight trying to arrange a trip to Tenerife, only determination and the exquisite service of the staff at the Riu Palace Maspalomas saved the day.

On Thursday, I tried to arrange a trip through LastMinute excursions and there was no one at the other end of the phone to sort it out.

I then went to a tour arranger on Friday who struggled to make the arrangement only to find out that I could not travel on the days I wanted and had to wait a week.

When we finally got to the detail, they would not pick me up at my hotel and the pick-up time was set for 05:31 in the morning despite the fact that their brochure indicated 07:31 – I eventually gave up on that arrangement.

A basic trip round the island was also too difficult for them to setup; it made one wonder what business they were in.

Arranged but cancelled

So, I returned to my hotel reception where there concierge was able to setup the VIP Tour of the island for Saturday and the trip to Tenerife/Loro Parque for Tuesday – today.

I dropped my keys at reception on Monday well after 15:00, but when I returned, there was a note for me indicating the trip had been cancelled.

I was not impressed and this was supposed have been arranged by another outfit called Ultramar Express – we were go nowhere either slowly or by express by all accounts.

No one could tell why the trip had been cancelled, that is not to say that it was also going to be an early pick-up at 05:35 in front of my hotel.

In the face of all that, I would have been able to have an early breakfast and a late cold dinner when we returned, but it did not happen and so my story.

They offered a simple Loro Parque tour for Wednesday which would have been just as good as a day out to the zoo, I wanted more, so I cancelled.

Service I cannot only praise

The manager however agonised about how to help, at one time I had the idea of going for a night to Tenerife and I went to see a travel agent recommended by the hotel – the travel agent was busy fixing a new air-conditioner so could not do anything till the afternoon.

As I returned to the hotel, the manager had already spoken to a tour director to see if I could join one of their arrangements to Tenerife that includes the Loro Parque, in fact, all had been arranged and it only required my assent.

He had the cash and all the necessary stuff ready when he came to speak to me and offered to introduce me to the tour director in my own time. I immediately took up the offer and it was all done in less than 5 minutes.

New pickup time – 07:20 on Wednesday and the guarantee of a late dinner when we return at just before 22:00.

Staff this good

You cannot get staff this good in any place but where they are well paid, well catered for and recognised as assets to the company – there is no doubt that it is the staff that creates the opportunity for repeat visits to these luxurious establishments.

I am utterly delighted and pleased; I do not expect to hear the tour has been cancelled but then, let us not tempt fate.