Yesterday, I worked from home as I had to be there for the second technician visit to happen for the internet setup. The last one was on the 2nd of February. As I was moving on the 1st, I was quite happy with this arrangement—I was gonna have the internet right after the moving day.
I explained to myself that this is what good customer service looks like. I switched away from Bell Canada—the antagonist in the horrible tale of telecom experience in Canada—and found Bravo Telecom at the recommendation of a colleague.
Since I switched sides, they have been doing a good job until now and I am sure they work out great for many people who use their services. What failed them (or could fail them) though is incompetence. In a complex world, the provider of any service will fail at some point or another. There’s always gonna be a bug in the system! It’s not a question of whether there’s gonna be a bug or not; rather who will it affect and at what cost.
This time the bug happens to hit me—I was the target. This bug cost me massively! I lost many productive hours; time that could have been spent organizing my new apartment. It’s been weeks since I haven’t talked to my parents overseas and my brother for more than a month!
I accepted—without protest—the second date of the technician’s visit. 13 days is a generous time for a second visit—most people in Canada would have switched their service providers within this kind of timeframe. But I wanted to give them a chance; it’s literally who I am I said to myself, that I give chances to others. I am a good man after all.
So, the external contractor technician comes yesterday and he repeats what the first one said: “There is no internet connection coming from the outside into the building, I can’t really do much about it. It doesn’t fall under my responsibility. You’ve to talk to your landlord.”
He carefully makes out the point that he is not the problem, nor his company who actually owns the infrastructure, nor the telecom company I purchased internet from who contracts from his company. His fingers were on the landlord.
My brain fused the moment he said that! I couldn’t care less whose fault was it. I wouldn’t be getting my internet! He didn’t know what to do about the situation. The landlord didn’t know. Nor did the telecom company since he’s not their employee but that of the telecom infrastructure provider. Then who knew???
So I went to their physical location. And I described the situation. There I lost it all… I was screaming at them describing the problem—lost circuits!… they still couldn’t figure out what is the situation in my apartment. I told them how good I was to them—they looked incredibly clueless and bewildered that this happened. Their understanding of what the technician does and the details he provides to them is a matter of chance and pure occurrence. Nobody was certain of anything.
And there between their foolishness and cluelessness, in awe of the sheer competence that was missing amongst them, I was thinking all along how lucky one must be to work with competent people! Then and there I learned what could probably be some of the biggest lessons I learned in my lifetime…
…that…
- It is a privilege to work with competent people
- It is a privilege for others they get to work with you, the competent
- Responsibility means to be entirely responsible
It is a privilege to work with competent people
With the telecom company, I realized that it’s not their mission nor their marketing, or their products that failed them. Rather it’s competency in the people that were working for them.
The first technician didn’t communicate properly to others what was the exact situation in my building. Instead, he thought it was not his problem since there was no internet connection to the building; after all, he came there to only connect the internet to my apartment and not to the building.
What this incompetent man missed was that it is nonetheless his responsibility to communicate effectively why the client he was serving was not gonna have internet. His incompetence lies in his failure to understand what was not his problem.
The moment I realized this—when the telecom people at their office told me—that the technician did not communicate well about the situation, I felt gratitude that I get to work with people that are fairly competent.
I wondered what it would have been like working at a medical technology company where the products my team makes affect people’s surgeries. What a nightmare it would have been!
In fact, without competent people, not only things would not progress, but also they would do much active damage consciously and unconsciously like the technician who thought that he was well doing his job not realizing that he didn’t lift up to it.
It is a privilege for others they get to work with you, the competent
If you’re fairly competent (most likely you’re since you’re reading this blog 😉) you should not let others take you for granted. The competence that you bring should demand respect. Period.
If people around you don’t know how to respect your competence, then those are the exact kind of people that you should not work with! And the opposite is equally true, people who are able to appreciate what you bring, your competency, technical knowledge, social skills, and all the other jazz, surrounding yourself with those kinds of people will not only elevate you but also them.
Responsibility means to be entirely responsible
People at the telecom company office, the customer service representatives, the technicians, and the landlord nobody wanted to take responsibility for something they were entirely responsible for.
This is where I failed… I thought they were responsible for everything internet after all it is not my home, I am renting; I am not a telecom company, nor a technician, so who am I to decide what are the necessary steps to bring internet to my apartment, right?
No. Not true. I was wrong.
I am responsible for all things mine. Again: I am responsible for all things mine. (And yet again: I am entirely responsible for all things mine.) Even when the responsibility is deferred to someone else. This was a light-bulb learning moment! Like many smart people, I want to think about as little things as possible. (An extreme example of this habit is Mark Zuckerberg who wears a T-Shirt of the same color every day because he wants to avoid making repeat small decisions.) But that doesn’t mean you can run away from decision-making and responsibility for poor outcomes due to your “deferment” of responsibility.
So in a way, true responsibility is ultimate. Never midway. There is no way you can half-ass it. Till now, all my life, I basically half-assed it since no one had the wisdom to teach me what true responsibility was.
Once I understood what responsibility entails, my whole life blurred around me, right there at the telecom provider’s office. I felt at that instant that there was no one I can fall back onto… As someone who is willing to take responsibility, what this means concretely is to be the wall on which others are gonna fall onto, and when this wall falls it will fall alone. It has to stand by its own merit and when it no longer can support itself, that is nothing but the end of its life.
And that end is a good end. An end to be proud of.
