Thought Picnic: A Task of an Ask

What an atrocity of wasted time

Nothing is more annoying than when jobs are created for people for the sake of it and in the process what was a simple process of interaction becomes a bureaucracy bottleneck of suddenly officious personnel frustrating others.

For a long time before I arrived on the scene, you got access just by asking reception, there was a sign emblazoned at reception saying this service is available on request from the same reception staff, no questions, no quibbles and no red-tape.

Inserting frustration

However, now a layer of unnecessary officialdom has been added to the workflow, even though ultimately the reception staff will service the request, the poor requester now has to do double legwork to get anything done.

The sign is still there but a renewal now requires that we visit reception to learn that we need to contact some pen-pusher who will click a button to ask reception to grant access whilst asking you enter the bureaucratic nightmare of service requests that end up on the desks of first responders whose powers of the basic perception of communication will make explaining the very visually graphical scene to the those with severe sensory deprivation a greater pleasure.

Bothering less

I wonder to myself if I really want to run the gauntlet of this essential to them but somewhat cumbersome for me situation, there are things that are not worth the bother besides creating a situation that the frustrated get creative and for all the resourcefulness available to man will be much tempted to break the system and get the fresh air of freedom and liberty.

As I write, the pen has been pushed but the reaction is late in coming, a 5-minute ask is easily becoming a 1-hour task for the sake of God knows what but eternal frustration.

Let’s not ruin a fine day, when it happens, it happens.

Incredible India: No task like a job

How many men do it take …?

I think I have to conclude, it is an Indian thing, passing through customs was a breeze of handlers. In fact, my passport was first touched at the entrance to the terminal and that was two checkers just 3 metres apart to ascertain the first had not been derelict in his duty of observance.

Then I am approached at ask was flight I would be on, that was by a lady, she gave me a form to fill in – yes, we have to fill in a departure form that includes the address of where we stayed in India amongst other unnecessary bureaucratic information.

Then I checked in my baggage with the privilege accorded a frequent flyer to add one more, airline loyalty and airmiles accumulation does pay. I paid for my return trip to India with my airmiles and got to travel in style too. Two men at check-in, though in this case, one did help with my baggage.

Form filling is form

After filling in the form and cabin luggage tags, one was issued for my cane but there was no way of attaching it to my cane, I did not bother; I gave my passport, boarding pass and departure form to the immigration officer who squinted and bent my passport every which way, took advice off his colleague then passed it through the electronic verification system before stamping it and handing it back.

Then I was at security where everything was put in trays and I was handed identifiers for the trays going through the X-ray system, at the point my boarding pass was checked and stamped, and that was a lady at work. When my goods eventually emerged from the X-ray system, eventually, because they chose to change positions after I stepped through the metal detector, the identifiers were matched and once again my boarding pass was stamped – another lady at work.

I had to smile as I watched the lady try to attach a hand baggage tag to my cane, a really stupid exercise that someone by law had to do – Shaking my head, vigorously.

All busy very slowly

I am surprised at my somewhat apt observation from when I arrived in India that there was indeed a man per task rather than a person doing a job that consists of tasks – this supposed division of labour keeps everyone busy and props up a bureaucratic system that is unwieldy at best.

Just when I thought I have seen the last of checks before the boarding gate was another man checking if my hand luggage had the correct tagging as well as ensuring I had a boarding pass – as if everyone else was sleeping on duty.

I suppose everyone is busy doing something in India, to what end escapes me apart from it keeping unemployment figures low, not helping people assume responsibility or take initiative and worst of all, it means very few will know how to multitask because it takes that to do a job and do it well.

Incredible India: Tasks, Buttons and Fashion Suicides

Many to the few

Going into town yesterday, I once again saw a reaffirmation of my earlier observation of the Indian workforce where there seems to be men for tasks rather than jobs.

I walked into a gentlemen’s outfitters and asked if they had day cravats, an assistant was immediately available and before I knew it, there were 30 cravats laid out before me from the garish to the demure – I tend towards the latter.

Then I wanted matching pocket squares and it became evident that a man’s distinction and discrimination of colour hues is not as developed as that of the female species. We settled for nearness rather than exactness, that was fine by me.

Hand to hand to hand

After I had agreed on what I wanted, we walked up to the cashier; well, I thought it was one cashier but there were two men sat behind the desk.

The first scanned the items and totted up the figures announcing it to his counterpart; I then counted out the money, handed it to the assistant who handed it to the first cashier and this was passed on to the second cashier.

The second cashier first checked the money under the ultra-violet light then counted the money, wrote out a receipt and then counted out the change.

The first cashier having seen that the transaction was completed, gave the assistant a bag in which to carry the goods and there ended my shopping experience in that store.

The division of labour that allows for jobs to be broken into tasks does not make for efficiency whilst it might compensate for the conspiracy of honesty in an impoverished environment.

The snobbery of buttons

I decided to stroll around Connaught Place which is a circular shopping area with the Central Park in the middle. There was a shop that did mostly shirts but when I noticed that the mannequin bedecked in a suit had all the buttons on the jacket done up my tendency to the facetious was too heightened to contemplate stepping in if the pretensions to high fashion left out the minor detail proper fashion sense.

I cannot seem to forget the saying reputedly of the late dressmaker to the Queen, Sir Hardy Amies; “Never trust a man with all his buttons done up.” There are times I have purposefully asked the fully buttoned up to undo the last button but it is an unhealthy snobbish inclination to judge a man by his clothes and to feel less of him by reason of doing up all his buttons; as for those who allow their trousers to sag; if I have much else to say to them, it would be, “Pull up your trousers, young man.”

Fashion victims can be rescued, fashion suicides are beyond salvation – the former can undo their buttons, the latter showing their cack-ridden underwear with their dawdle walk, you can only wonder.

As Nigerian as WaZoBia - Time-wasting courtesy calls

Angelic crowning

A couple of weeks ago, Funmi Iyanda posted a congratulatory advertisement where the newly sworn-in president was being crowned in some sort of celestial glory by some angel.

So silly was the picture, the diadem being placed over a fula (traditional Hausa cap), both the crown and hat would have fallen off the moment the hands were lifted from the crown - ironic.

The madness that overcomes Nigerians in this kind of show through advertisement is at times comical but is a cultural malaise that eats into the core of what is Nigerian.

Tasking tasks tasked tasker (sic)

Along with this the pages of Nigerian newspapers with the unusual contexts of tasks and tasking - it should be a rarity to use tasks as a verb or tasking in the present continuous - the context being conveyed is akin to thinking about a subject and doing something about it. So, agency, vested interests or patrons task the president with some ideal and the President tasks others with other ideals.

Unfortunately, the President does not have time to do any of the tasks, generally, when you win an election well-wishers and allies pick up the phone and send their congratulations - In Nigeria, that is too technologically advanced for many to comprehend, just last week, the President had to entertain a 300-strong delegation of people from Kaduna State including the governor who had left their posts to seeking presidential patronage in the name of goodwill.

I doubt if more purposeful state visits carry entourages this large.

Attending to the wrong crowd

So, in this rather hopefully crowded schedule of running Nigeria, he had to make time to acknowledge and entertain these time-wasting mendicants whose main goal was nothing to do with the matters of state, but a jolly at the expense of Nigeria to achieve nothing for Nigerians. It would appear these delegations would expect the Federal Government to pick up the tab for this unwarranted junket.

The man is beginning to impress me, breaking with tradition and taking a laudable stance, he acknowledged them and then upbraided them saying "While I appreciate this great outpouring of affection and the pledges of support for which I feel humbled, I must say that there is so much work to do in our country today and I will like to concentrate on the crucial task of repositioning our country for peace, sustainable development and prosperity."

That is as good a put down as anyone would give in a very sympathetic and diplomatic way. It transpires, he had warned off delegations from his state. You can expect people to accuse him of being parsimonious rather than smart and frugal with a sense of responsiblity - it does not feed into the Nigerian hedonistic complex and inordinate quest for all things free at other people's expense, especially the treasury looting and largesse sharing part.

The President himself has offered to visit all Nigerians, meaning he would chose his time and make it purposeful, that is not to say the states would not go overboard in outdoing each other when entertaining the President. Can't we just do this through email, SMS, video conferencing, radio, television or smoke signals?

As Nigerian as WaZoBia

However, this endemic time-wasting activity is as Nigerian as WaZoBia (WaZoBia is a concatenation of the Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo translations of come), most of the time we receive guests unannounced and it is a matter of courtesy to accommodate and entertain these guests, the logistics of handling 300 guests are hard enough for a country that cannot conduct free and fair elections.

In official parlance, this abuse of other people's private space is called a courtesy call - Yes, how can I massage the ego of a self-important person? By aimlessly visiting for a useless photo-opportunity whilst pretending to discuss immaterial issues and thereby killing time, wasting time and squandering money.

References

Enough congratulations, says President

Please, I've got a job to do