Don't you just hate it when you call say, the phone or cable company to report about something that needs fixing, and they'd say the repairman will come over to your house "before lunch," "between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., or 2 p.m. and 6 p.m." "tomorrow morning," "maybe in the afternoon."
I once waited the whole day for the cable company which insists that the cable connection be outfitted with a digibox, because it promised to install the said tracking device "before lunch...maybe."
I once got scalded ("scolded" can be used, too) in the office when I set an appointment with a subject "between 9 and 10 a.m." He waited for me not more than 10 minutes and left the agreed venue. I arrived 45 minutes later. He complained to my manager who in turn, gave me a thorough dressing-down, ya know, an Oprah lecture on time management.
When we say 7 p.m., let's be sure it's 7 (a few minutes late is tolerable) and not 8 or worse 9:00, Yah?
1 comment:
Dude, these are what you call “truckrolls”. The case of your cable appointment is way different from your business appointment. Sufficed to say, I also have my fair share of experience when it comes to these kinds of crap. My Smart Bro (formerly Smart Wifi- (Good call when the company decided to change it because the latter sounds sooo pretentious)) suddenly went down with reasons I am not aware of. So I decided to get in touch with them, got down with the dirty stuff of troubleshooting my connection when for all I know, something is really wrong with the network. As it turned out, the device which they installed (that white box towered on the top of your roof to get the wireless signals)) is blocked by an unknown infrastructure from the server. So they had to send out some technicians over and do the necessary adjustments.
They also provided that kind of scheduling scheme, like “their technicians will arrive some time around 8am-12pm or 1-5pm”. Apparently, technicians have no say on the scheduling since all appointments for the day are dependent on the available technicians and volume of repairs/deliveries/installments on a particular or nearby location. In other words, they plot it on the time which will be convenient and practical for them, which is also the reason why you’ll be compelled to be at home and wait until they arrive. It really sucks when you can’t leave the house because you’re service is badly in need of repair from the company and much worse, they’ll arrive later than late.
With regards to your appointment, well, I guess there was just a lack on communication between the two parties. You see, not everyone has the same concept of what’s “on-time” especially in the kind of culture Filipinos have, and im not saying that it’s bad. That’s just how we Filipinos are. Filipino time is not bad-it’s just timeless. We don’t usually dictate the start or end of an event. But of course, it’s still a case to case basis and varies depending on the context, especially in the corporate setting. The best thing to do is to set a definite itinerary or back up plan. Let’s say if your appointment is 9-10 am, it means that you are telling that person that the room for the appointment is within that time. You also need to consider the fact that your subject has a life too yah know. Contingency action plans should be set like if you don’t arrive after ten-fifteen minutes, then you can already call it off or just meet a different day, perhaps. It depends. But don’t expect anyone to wait for an hour! Hahaha. So I guess you really deserve that scolding then. Hahaha.
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