strange things do happen…

‘Today’ is one of those days where everything just not so positive…

A planned 1-hour trip took 2 hours instead. Missed the bus in front of my eyes, only to wait for a long time after that. At the bank, another long wait. I only wanted to ask questions at the general counter but there was only 1 person serving and people needed forms filled and each person took forever long.

I was looking at the door where priority banking customers walked in. Oddly, the intellectual discourse on income gap disparity sprung to my mind. I was watching the ‘great service’ they get – prompt and personal service because they have high ‘net worth’. My next thought….such practices encourage people to be materialistic and pretentious. People want to be seen as ‘rich’ but are they really rich?

So, the ‘supposed poor’ moi – does not deserve personalised attention, just relegated to the ‘poor man’s’ line where we just stood and waited till the magical hour…where the service staff says ‘how may i help you [poor net worth person]? There is indeed a gap between rich and poor!

At the supermarket line, i deliberately chose the express line – one that was not full of people, and without many baskets…I even looked at the cashier….only to find that the customer at the top of the line had too many items, and the next person had a bone to pick so the cashier was distracted. Instead of finding someone to follow through, with the price checks, she walked away with the customer leaving us waiting indefinitely, so much for ‘Express Line’. I changed to another cashier only to find that the person was taking her own sweet time, and that took 20mins which could have been 5mins.

I was pondering about the factors – the cashier speed and attitude; the customers behaviours, the cashier’s skills; the products…need weighing or not; number of customers etc – so many things determine the speed with which i would take to pay for my purchase.

Isn’t that the same with any decision? It is never a single dimension. All angles / all aspects / all the different variables play on each other, and so when analysing problems for clients, we must see many angles, thoughts, details etc.