Ubuntu

I needed to travel to the Northern Cape. At one of our retail giants, I enquired about ticket prices and travel dates. "No", said the helpful assistant. "We do not give senior citizen discounts". Disappointing, but there it was.

 I returned a few days later to buy  tickets for a two stage journey. A different helpful assistant was behind the counter. The ticket price had gone up by R200, which I thought was rather dramatic for an interval of a few days. However, this particular assistant did give senior citizen discounts. So all was well that ended well - that far. 

No sooner had I purchased my tickets, than I received SMS's from the bus companies advising that my journey would be cancelled if I did not pay up within the specified.time A little bizarre, as simple logic would suggest that I could not be holding two tickets in my grubby hands had I not paid for them.

Thus began the joyous game of "all our lines are busy, please be patient". After the customer service person had blamed the retail giant for an unfortunate misunderstanding, we parted good friends, promising to meet up for tea at some time on the future.

The next challenge was that my pick up instructions for the first stage of the journey were somewhat confusing. They read something like:

'Pick up at Caltex service station drop off JTV'. Several possibilities suggested themselves. Would they pick me up and then drop me off a few hundred metres  down the road, just to add a fun element to the trip? Was this perhaps a game of 'choose your favourite pick up point'? I called,  just for the heck of it. After we had confirmed which of the two points was the pickup point, I pointed out to the service person that this was rather confusing. For example, why mention 'drop off' when all that I needed was to be picked up. We then had a slightly heated discussion. The essence of her argument was 'This Is How We Do It and it would be terribly inconvenient to do it any other way'. The essence of my argument was 'I am the customer.  I need clarity and not to be left clutching my luggage and scratching my head at the wrong rendezvous'. The service person terminated the conversation with what a suspicious person might have considered huffy abruptness. I am not suspicious. I do understand that we customers need to be more considerate and not disturb the even tenor of the lives of our suppliers.

I had made a similar trip from Durban station more than two years ago.  The escalators were not working then. They were not working now. Our guys are consistent. Few things in this life equal the joy of lugging suitcases and bags up two dead escalators.  A large, cheery sign greeted me at the top  'PRASA Welcomes You To The Future'. I looked around the dark, malodorous station with its indoor potholes. Would that future involve a zombie apocalypse, then? The place certainly looked like the set of the movie.

At the set time  of  the rumbling stomach,  I visited a fish shop which sold  everything except fish. It turned out that the shop had changed hands but the effort of removing references to  fish had proved too much for the new owner, exhausted from the Herculean labours of wheeling and dealing. Perfectly understandable. 

There was a sign in the shop announcing that cellphones would no longer be  charged because of the misbehaviour of customers. I felt the guilt of my entire race descend upon me - the race of customers with a penchant for misbehaviour.

Anyway, the bus itself was bound to be an improvement. The driver sternly warned us that we were on no account to leave the bus unless he expressly announced that we may do so at a rest stop. Suitably chastened,  we paid attention. He went on to say that the toilets were for Number One only and that Number Two would require special arrangements.  He mumbled something about the bush which I didn't  perfectly catch. I have always been confused about what exactly each of those numbers represents. I was not about to display my ignorance of that most basic of life skills to a bus full of strangers.

The bus  just managed to cross the discomfort to comfort divide. There were minor challenges  - cellphone charging ports not working, no water in the Number One toilet. Little things that shouldn't trouble the reasonable traveller who enjoys eating with unwashed hands after a bit of number one.

And that's how we roll (downhill) in South Africa, customer service excellence and Ubuntu our rallying cry.

I suppose one might summarize it along these lines:

1. Both government and large swathes of the private sector live by the dictum that South Africans are not deserving of their best (or even moderate) efforts. Ubuntu is cunningly hidden and disguised.

2. Customers are too weary or pessimistic or cynical to demand better for their taxes and rands.

No real surprise. We have been fed mouthfuls of this manure for years by a corrupt, callous govt that thinks it proper to raise pensions by R10. Their own increases, of course, commensurate with the value that they add.

Viva New Dawn, Seven Pillars, Ubuntu and all the other inspirational stuff.

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723