Category Archives: Lifes Lessons

Lifes Lessons

Travel Fiasco Xmas 2022 & Customer Service Generally

There was a travel fiasco during Xmas of 2022. It’s about values and conscientiousness. If values have been eroded and folks don’t care, service levels suffer. If an ego is so activated, there is trepidation with communication in fear of culpability. In a nutshell, this is what would have happened in the airline industry during Christmas of 2022. Things were off the rails and folks were patronized instead of treated with dignity. Let’s be clear. It’s undignified to basically hold one hostage with an absence of information.

Today the big wheels convene to sort out the mess and review the “Passenger Bill of Rights”. This amendment will be interesting in the context of competing interests and international differences in standards. 

Generally, there has been a wholehearted movement away from the telephone. The telephone is brilliant technology much more adept at handling multiple topics quickly without the need for typing skills. It has been a conduit for conducting commercial transaction for over a century. In fact, vocal tones in and of themselves along with what is not said provides for positivity in an exchange. Yet, newer generations swipe dismiss and fail to check their voice mail. 

Just today I spoke in consternation with a firm which has also admitted to dropping the ball in their relationship with me. Of course, all of the particular wheel spinning could have been avoided with a transparent adroit phone call.

You are right now involved in relationships with large corporations which do the following:

  1. They send you emails with the term “no-reply” in their email address.
  2. Do not provide a 1-800 number for service.
  3. Require you to deploy a smart phone to conduct a transaction only when an in person or voice telephone means is practical.
  4. Receive emails from service agents who do not include their name and /or phone number in the signature of an email.
  5. Have failed to notate relevant particulars to your account therefore requiring its repeat on subsequent outreach.
  6. Take up your valuable time with their propaganda in an outgoing phone message prior to providing a prompt.

You have mostly thrown up your arms in apathy because you feel there is no recourse. Then you become the one sleeping on an airport floor with your two year old. 

Lifes Lessons

Heart Break At Manitoba U.S. Border

One wrong- headed move and your life could be over just like this family of four from India. The Canadian elements have lead to heart break at the Manitoba U.S. Border for one family not necessarily accustomed to how cold it can get. I’ve spent time in the far north in the winter time and I’ll tell you – even if well prepared….the Canadian winters are a brutal force.

It was the summer of 1983 (that’s right – a Canadian summer day) and I was working as a summer student at a gold mine as a millwright’s assistant in between first and second year of university. I was stationed out of Thompson Manitoba but was flown into a mining camp some 200km north of the Manitoba border into Nunavut (was still the N.W.T. back then) on a one week in and one week out rotation.

There is much camaraderie in the mining business and I was the mill superintendent’s son. There would have been an unspoken agreement among those working in the mill to ensure to look out for the kid. One day there was a blizzard and it was time to go for lunch. The mess hall was only 200 feet from the mill but in a “white out” you’re lucky to see your hand in front of your face never mind 200 feet into the distance. However; a vague outline of the destination building was visible. The mill exit door and the mess hall entrance were corner to corner and if you missed the corner and became disoriented, you’d be potentially left vulnerable to the freezing cold Canadian north.

As an eighteen year old, I had already experienced life in the far north having lived in a place called Cantung, N.W.T  as a child in 1975/76. I had cross country skied and snowmobiled up there in very cold conditions. There was talk of dress and respect for the cold. Parents had lived life on the prairies of Canada rurally growing up. A culture of cold had been nurtured within.

In other words, I had been conditioned to formulate a plan just for going for lunch on that wintery summer day. I ventured back from the exit to find a mill operator who would monitor my trip with signals and sound. After lunch….conditions changed and the trip back was all clear. This one small measure was relatively hassle free.     

It’s heart shattering to have learned that this family of four from India froze to death in their quest for a new life in the U.S. It’s maddening to learn that there’s not better coordination of law enforcement between countries.        

Health, Lifes Lessons, Politics

Nurses Quebec Example

Did you know that Quebec reported 50,000 health care workers now on “leave” from work due to “burn out”? Just when your country needed them most….those nurses in Quebec are now collecting a disability cheque. That’s right – short term and long term disability claims are enormous right now. The actual number not on the job is actually 70,000 with the other 20,000 associated with those in current isolation. It’s staggering and you can look to see an increase in insurance costs for whichever policy for which you apply because you are not immune from the effect of claims paid in sectors unrelated to your policies. There is some correlation between sector related claims pertaining to generating premiums but that correlation is not 100 per cent. Insurance companies spread risk through a process called “reinsurance” thereby indirectly affecting you. 

You know when Canadian soldiers lined the trenches while securing our freedom, there was no 1-800 number to call for applying for mental health leave. Of course, there are the “professional associations” and “unions” which provide complicating variables in restricting governments from casting a broader net for acquiring human resources necessary during this critical time. It should be no surprise that doctors are sparse and unavailable to assist due to our system of education and influence of the professional association in limiting access to the profession.    

 Here we are in a health care crisis whereby those associations so adamant at protecting their professions are now desperate. Nurses in Quebec and across Canada are needed now. Help them help us.  

Lifes Lessons, Philosophy

Intelligent Voices On Mute

Have you ever noticed that it’s the quiet ones oftentimes most cerebral and wise? Have the intelligent voices been put on mute? In this social media oriented environment, unfortunately society is not well served by having their voices “on mute”. The megaphones seem to be in the hands of the blasphemous and irrational.

My blog serves as a conduit to broadcast my occasional philosophical rants. I do so in the context of a politically correct theatre whereby professional organizations muzzle their members, stake holders are intimidated by the bureaucratic maze, government officials show up unimpassioned in the comfort of their home office. 

Then there are the news organizations keen to report a traffic accident or a tawdry affair of a public figure or the banality of a Stevie Nicks decision not to tour in the face of COVID but absent in the context is the reporting of the Taliban regaining a foothold in populous Afghanistan cities with the departure of G7 troops. The editorial boards frustrate public debate with their protective bias with a justification that contrasting opinions are tainted with a compromise of their community guidelines. Cutting opinion coloured with sarcasm and eloquence is mistaken for personal attack. Editorialists are now too daft to know the difference.       

The intelligent either puts up a blog like mine in appeasement of intellectual vigour or steps away with indifference in character of the disposition of prototypical Canadians. There’s always letters and emails I suppose if one possesses intense follow up protocol.  If you are a borne and bread Western Canadian in the middle of your life having not attended French immersion as a child during a time when so little of it was available – you most likely won’t be seeking federal political office.

The megaphones are abundant but you shake your head at what comes out of them. It is so bizarre that you need to possess through training – acumen for idling the rational mind instead of joining the chorus of folks now trumpeting the “mental health” mantra.