A Turn for the Worse

A : Things are so much worse now.

T : Like what?

A : People and the things they do …

T : What makes you say that?

A : The violence, the loss of public and private morals, the …

T : Easy does it. Nothing new I’d say. What’s your point?

A : Technology seems to have made everything so much worse.

T : Has it? I’d have thought it was the other way around.

A : You are perpetually perverse. What do you mean?

T : I mean that earlier, you never really knew what all people were capable of, while they were upto whatever …

A : So?

T : Now, you know.

A ( irritated ) : What’s your point?

T : I don’t somehow get the notion of technology causing you to do something new and abominable. The abominable is nothing new by itself – look at History. It is just that you now have historically advantaged perspective, of getting near real-time takes on the abominable and its aftermath.

A : That makes it better?

T : It certainly does not make it any worse. What do you believe – just because technology has advanced, people are supposed to have progressed ethically too? Where is the causative connection?

A : You’re daft.

T : I must be, if I’m talking to you about this.

A : There is so much of BAD!

T : There is so much of diverse forms of media. BAD sells. Who’s doing the buying?

A Little Game

A : I believe in the equality of women and men.
T : Why? Don’t you see it? And if you do, then why do you need to believe in it?
…
A : I believe in God.
T : This is a little confusing. Do you mean to say that God talks to you and you believe whatever he utters to be the Gospel Truth? Or do you mean to say that you believe that God exists as Conceivable Entity?
… I’ll not belabour this point here, though. This is worthy of independent development on the following lines …
A ( Furious! ) : Both!
T : They contradict each other.
A : What?!!!
T : They do. Look at them …
A : I just uttered the words and I don’t see any contradictions.
T : I note that you are asserting that God exists by virtue of his talking to you. He/She does not do so for me. Hence here is one part of your experience ( or being ) which is completely disjunct from mine. Hence, in any meaningful communication between us, we know that God must not be invoked or else I would have no clue to what you are talking about nor would it be a matter of our common human experience.
T : I also note that you assert that God exists as a conceivable entity which is open to misinterpretation – like, He/She exists only as a concept with no other Reality. The other interpretation would be God exists and is conceivable – which as you notice,  is regressive.
A : This is serious! Don’t make fun of God …
T : Ouch! Sorry. I wasn’t making fun ‘of’ God as such, at most having a little fun with YOUR conception of Him/Her.
A : You’d be better off doing better than that …
T : So I intend to.
…
A : I believe in Justice.
T : Why?
A : What do you mean – Why?!
T : If someone were to say to me that he believed in Injustice, I would ask him the same question. Why?
…
Okay, this was just a bit of fun and games. But the idea was to get a glimpse of the kind of difficulties that Wittgenstein seems to have spoken of …

Small Change

Lets envision a little conversation … on the subject of rude Counter Staff. At the Railways.
…
Achilles : This must change. It really should.
Tortoise : Everything changes. Everything must. So I do do not know what you mean. What must change?
( The tortoise is always a little too slow, and consequently faster since he wins the race. Please excuse this digression since it bears on what is to ensue )
A : The rude behaviour of the staff at the Booking Counter.
T : You mean someone was rude to you.
A : Yes, and they always are.
T : Always have been, you mean.
A ( irritated ) : Always will be, I mean!
T : Should I go stand in line and find out?
A  ( grins ) : Shut Up. I mean they always tend to talk as if you are a bother to them.
T : If I were in their place, I’d feel the same. Did you notice the office?
A : So what, they chose to work there. That’s their problem. They’re supposed to be polite to me.
T : Yes, they are. Indeed. Did you notice the indecision of a lot of customers about their contingency plans? You took some time yourself – didn’t you? To ask if we should go on the 21st or the 28th since 14th was out.
A : So? These things need a little deliberation at the end.
T : Or lack of imagination at the beginning?
A : What has this got to do with their rudeness?! It was only a couple of minutes that phonecall to C took.
T : Maybe the man earlier in the queue did the same too?
A : So? That’s part of their job.
T : Maybe someone must have really riled the clerk up, early on. Or maybe he’s having a bad day.
A : I have bad days too. I don’t deal with people rudely.
T : Ah. But you do fly off the handle now and then.
A : There is a limit to tolerance at times.
T : Maybe it was the clerk’s day today.
A : But it always happens this way.
T : Maybe because in the numbers that are handled in a day, there is a high probability that someone or the other will rub off wrongly, for the clerk.
A : But then they ought to have learnt how to deal with this.
T : For some time they do, and again there is something like this in the next hour or so.
A : What are you driving at?
T : Let’s set up some very simple numbers here.
A : This is pointless. They are SUPPOSED to be polite and I will not accept anything to the contrary.
T : Indulge me.
A : What numbers?
T : How many people ahead of you in the line when you got in? Roughly.
A : Twenty.
T : And how long did it take for you to get to the clerk?
A : About an hour.
T : So we estimate a service of anything between 150 to 200 people for an eight hour shift?
A : Okay …
T : How many of them, from those who come to getting their reservations done at the counter, instead of online and saving potential bother, do you feel would be illiterate and / or clueless otherwise?
T : Going by the sample that we saw.
A : Say about a quarter.
T : Lets reduce it to a fifth and then estimate the number of vacillations like yours gauging by the state of reservation for your train which was a month away.
A : I was getting WL 20 for AC III
T : Since the number of seats for SL II are at least tenfold more, there are likely to be at least ten fold more people queuing up than for AC III. Which is twice that for AC II. So starting with AC II viz 50 seats 10 WL to AC III 100 seats 20 WL to SL II 1000 seats WL 200.
A : Numbers don’t tell you anything.
T : Okay fine. Simplify. Let’s assume that those who come in for reservations in advance of 30 days of the journey are likely to get a confirmation whereas those that come in later get WL.
A : You mean a 50-50 across the open two month period, depending on when they turn up?
T : Yes. So would it be fair to assume that half of those left after deduction of a fifth are likely to be the potential waitlisted?
A ( dubiously ) : Seems so … Why deduct the fifth?
T : The illiterates and clueless. I’m assuming that your average clerk, with average tenure at the counter, dealing with the numbers he/she does, has realised through experience that getting irate with such customers only extends their time at the counter. So he is patient and does some of their work for them so as to get rid of them ASAP.
A : That sounds logical.
T : If not, then they get added to the estimate of potential irritants, which as we found, is about two-fifths of the total number.
A : 60-80, you mean.
T : Lets resize that number since I assume that the average clerk does not hit the counter with a decision to scowl through the rest of the shift.
T : Lets peg the number at 30 giving the clerk an irritation for 1.5 hours of the eight hours of his shift. And since it is just a ball-park figure, you can expect sizeable variations in this number whereas you are not so likely to get an equivalent variation in the demeanour of the average clerk.
A : That’s not my problem.
T : But you’re the one demanding change. The others seem to get by, rudeness or not.
A : But surely it must be possible to do something. Why can’t people book online then?
T : Did you? It is surely not any different for the clerk whether you did not or someone else did not.
A : Then online booking should be encouraged, if this is inevitable.
T : It is. But then try and guess the numbers on the largest railways network on the planet which have to log on. If, assuming they all do, you’ll need a commensurately-sized system to handle the queuing loads. With redundancies. With confidence in online transactions at that scale. You believe it is not being put in place, while we speak?
A : Why couldn’t they estimate the growth in numbers in advance? So that we don’t have a problem now.
T : Maybe they did and got it wrong. Maybe they did not when they could have got it right. It is always a NOW for someone or the other. In all probability they did but in all likelihood they found that they could not. Can you predict such numbers? Or maybe if you can, could you set it up? And if you could set it up, what stopped you from setting it up?
T: You’ll find that you are now demanding a hell of a lot more than the seemingly simple change that you started off with. Maybe now you’ll find that you need a reduction in bureaucracy, red-tape and corruption and an increase in transparency. Do you see how it scales up or transforms as you consider your demand for simple politeness from clerks.
T : Sometimes or for some clearly identifiable occasions they do manage to bear up, when they set up special trains and ad hoc Tatkal schemes. But that is besides the point, do you see what your original demand seems to require now?
A : I don’t believe this numbo-jumbo.
T : Lets look at it differently then. You’ve got a bad memory of this instance, and maybe all such which is what prompts you to say that they always behave like that. Do you remember when your business got dealt with without irritation? By railway booking clerks?
A : I don’t.
T : Do you mean that it never occurred or do mean that such instances never registered in your mind?
A : Now you’re just trying to get me into a corner.
T : I’m just asking a simple question. It should not be so difficult to answer.
T : Let’s look at it still differently. You had a bad experience and you talked to me. I don’t see myself as letting the clerk have it the next time I am at the counter. But it is possible, and sometimes very likely, that someone or the other, with feedback from irate friends such as you, approaches the clerk as ‘someone who must be put in his place’. What do you think is the likely outcome of such an interaction? And its effect on your average clerk?
T : We still haven’t considered another factor – personal problems that people carry to work. Would it be unreasonable to infer that at least one or two of the clerks across ten counters would be under such stress?
A : Okay. Okay. I get your point.
T : Maybe it is not so easy to demand change. Or maybe it is, as you seem to have shown. But is not always possible to get it. Or maybe it is all a matter of being able to make out what can be changed and what must be accepted. I’ve never really had a problem because I do not recall the last time I was unclear/clueless or rude to a clerk. That is something I can do something about. The clerk I can do very little about, because as our little exercise seems to have demonstrated, you’ll end up wanting a total online system with users capable of doing everything on their own i.e. the entire country to be literate, logged on and administratively cleaned-up just because clerks were not polite to you at the booking counter. You seriously believe it is possible to achieve something like that and that you are being denied such achievement solely due to some vested interest or the other? Did he refuse to conduct your business? No. Or maybe you’d argue for better stress training and customer requirement sensitisations.
A : Yes, they could do that.
T : Tell me something. You work in a private company with customer sales and grievance redressal / support.
A : So?
T : You must be having similar executive / representative training programs.
A : Yes. With half-yearly refreshers.
T : Then tell me, you must have reduced the load on your complaints / grievance redressal department. Or did you end up increasing its size, scale and level of operations including automation.
A : The load never reduces.
…
With apologies to Hofstadter for abuse of his beloved characters and anyone else for offending their beliefs, sentiments and sensibilities. I hope I made some sense …
…
Note : I’d forgotten that Hofstadter had referred the characters originally to Lewis Carroll’s little exposition of Zeno’s Paradoxes. So the apologies incrementing that addressed to Hofstadter now tendered to the memory of Carroll too.