Last New Year,
if your ‘gas was finished’, you stayed home day after day until you heard the
growl and clank of the delivery truck. Or your servant or neighbour yelled out
to alert you of its arrival. Then you ran to it and paid a premium for the
cylinder. If you missed the truck, you went and threw a tantrum somewhere. Our
local distributor, Mr Kavlekar, told me that earlier, 10% of his customers
booked cylinders, the larger majority followed the method mentioned above.
Then phone
booking happened. The number dialled took my booking, told me my place in the
queue, and up to which date the deliveries/bookings were being handled. When I
discovered that it wouldn’t tell me when I’d get our ‘gas’, I tried the
company’s website to track what was happening. Didn’t help me get my ‘gas’
until I complained via email, to the company. Mr K immediately sent me a refill
in his own car. Not once, but three times. Once I didn’t get a receipt. Many
days later, I got an sms telling me that ‘my’ cylinder was delivered. I
wondered, where and to whom!
Why, I asked
Mr K a few days ago, does the truck not come to my wado on the given day of the
week? “I have too much ‘gas’ to give,” he answered, rattling off statistics of
how many hundreds of cylinders had to be delivered where no four-wheels could
go. “’Gas they carry on their backs, haan, my staff. They have to carry to the
doorstep. Not like Panaji where so many people stay in one building and there
are lifts. Here everything is far-far.”
Can
Hindustan Petroleum or Bharat Petroleum or other such companies make cylinders
of equally strong but lighter material? Better still, can we not provide the
transporters with trolleys? Just asking. Until then, the staff will have to do
their jobs, right? “Right,” Mr K agreed.
“Now,” Mr K
continued, “after this phone-booking business started, 90% of the people book
on the phone.” He sighed. I didn’t see the problem. Had the company not been
supplying properly? “That’s not it,” he sighed again. The problem, apparently,
were the customers. They were used to stopping the truck and getting their
refills, and now that that wasn’t happening, they came to the office to argue
with him.
Logic isn’t
my strongpoint and neither, apparently, is it Mr K’s.
“Why don’t
you tell your staff to follow the system?” I asked.
“They don’t
listen,” he said. Stupid me, I should have guessed.
“Why aren’t
you strict with them?”
“I can’t.
They make money on the side.” (I must learn to shut up. I must learn to not
laugh at inappropriate moments. I must not ask stupid questions. I must… )
Then I broke
my own rules: “Why aren’t you strict with them?”
And deserved
this: “I just told you, they don’t listen they do what they want.” A moment’s
sombre silence, in memory of common-sense. We both calmed down.
At my
request, Mr K continued his explanation: “You see I have enough transport,
enough staff also, in fact more than enough, but since this fixed day per week
per route isn’t working, I decided to have monthly dates instead.”
I had been
told, after on the 18th day after I’d made my booking, that the
delivery in my area would be on the 8th of the month. One delivery
round per area per month. If you missed that date, you’d have to wait for
another month. If you ran out of ‘gas’ despite having a second cylinder, you
burnt the neighbourhood garbage to cook your meals. Or, if you owned a
micro-wave or some other oven, you experimented with a different cuisine. Ooh,
did I look forward to that!!
After both
of us had finished entertaining the others present with our (il)logical
arguments, we calmed down and heard each other out. He heard how nerve-wracking
it was for me to stay home whole day, day after day, just waiting, waiting for
the ‘gas’. I heard how lucky he was that two of his naughty drivers had quit
their jobs with him and the newbies could be trained properly. Umm, ‘properly’?
Luckier still, two of his desk staff had left too, so his wife now came to the
office as replacement. So now someone would pick up the phone when it rang, I
guessed, to tell me just when I’d get my ‘gas’. It’s like being told my daily
horoscope. I don’t believe it, but read it anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment