TriumphAnt

If I should ever get to thinking that Canadian government bureaucracy is overlarge and overcumbersome, I should just consider this:

“The country is ruled by an elected Council of 60, who appoints 2 captain regents (from opposing political parties, no less) to administer governmental affairs for six-month term. Talk about preserving liberties through division of authority!”

The country in question? The Republic of San Marino, 24 square miles with a population of just over 28,000 (when last counted in 2005).

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Is your job fun, too?

Early one recent morning, my boss’s boss asked me to take a package of a dozen English-language news articles that had been published in various Canadian media and send them for translation because they are part of a larger background package that will be used in a test to be taken by candidates competing for a management position in our unit. And federal government competitions are always fully bilingual.

He also advised me that I should not discuss this at all with (here he gave me three names of colleagues in my unit) because each of the three is a candidate in the competition. The problem (for me) is that two of the three are also the people in our unit who typically deal with ordering any translation we need from the vast administrative maw that is the Government of Canada’s translation service.

It took the better part of a morning for me to finally get to the point where I was able to send the material off for translation. Along the way, I had to set up a personal account with the Government of Canada’s translation service; I had to seek out and include administrative data that identified our unit by a 12-digit numerical code under which translation expenses are authorized. In order to do this, I had to speak to no fewer than seven different people. I really could have gotten the information from either of two people in our unit, but as was earlier noted, both are candidates in this competition and my boss’s boss was specific about not even asking them for information about the process, much less the particulars of the articles in question.

Then, to top of the truly satisfying success that comes only with the knowledge of a job well-done, about half an hour after sending the package off, I got a call from the Government of Canada’s translation bureau. They told me they will not even begin to translate news clippings unless each clipping is accompanied by a release of copyright.

I sent my boss’s boss a three-word update: “Over to you.”

So, to sum up: I was asked to do a task I had never done before, and told specifically not to ask for information about how to do it from the only people I know who know how to do it and, after having finally found out how to do it was told by the people who actually do the task that they won’t do it.

Your tax dollars at work.

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Too funny not to share…

These come straight from a blog called Miss Cellania, and are the latest in the ongoing weblists of odd calls to Tech Customer Support Centres. They come, of course, with the usual caveat that their truthiness depends on how much credibility you attach to the citation, “I read it on the Internet.” Their funnyness, however, is not in dispute:

CALL CENTER CUSTOMERS

Customer: "I've been ringing 0700 2300 for two days and can't get through to enquiries, can you help?"
Operator: "Where did you get that number from, sir?"
Customer: "It was on the door to the travel centre".
Operator: "They're our opening hours".

Caller: "Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?"
Operator: I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand who you are talking about".
Caller: "In the user guide it clearly states I need to unplug the fax machine from the wall socket and telephone Jack before cleaning. Can you give me his number?"
Operator: "I think you mean the telephone point on the wall".

Caller: Does your European Breakdown Policy cover me when I am travelling in Australia?"
Operator: " Doesn't the name of the product give you a clue?"

Caller: "If I register my car in France, do I have to change the steering wheel to the other side of the car?"

Caller: "I''d like the number of the Argoed Fish Bar in Cardiff please".
Operator: "I'm sorry, there's no listing. Is the spelling correct?"
Caller: "Well, it used to be called the Bargoed Fish Bar but the ‘B’ fell off".

Then there was the caller who asked for a knitwear company in Woven.
Operator: "Woven? Are you sure?"
Caller: "Yes. That''s what it says on the label: Woven in Scotland".

On another occasion, a man making heavy breathing sounds from a phone box told a worried operator: "I haven't got a pen, so I''m steaming up the window to write the number on"."

Tech Support: "I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop".
Customer: "OK" .
Tech Support: "Did you get a pop-up menu?"
Customer: "No" .
Tech Support: "OK. Right-Click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?"
Customer: "No" .
Tech Support: "OK. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?"
Customer: "Sure. You told me to write 'click' and I wrote 'click'".

Tech Support: "OK. In the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you see the 'OK' button displayed?"
Customer: "Wow. How can you see my screen from there?"

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Closing the loop…

In the previous entry, you might recall I recounted how the House of Commons, buttressed by a petition of over 100,000 signatures, had unanimously approved to hold a state funeral for the last of the three known surviving veterans of WWI, only to find out that not one of them wants the honour.

Well, here’s the opening paragraph of a story that appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on January 4:

“The federal government has officially scrapped plans for a state funeral to mark the passing of Canada's last First World War veteran after the families of each of the three surviving participants in the 1914-1918 conflict declined the country's offer, CanWest News Service has learned.”

The story goes on to note that government is instead discussing the possibility of crafting a wide observance such as a national day of mourning to mark the passing of the last of the three (although with no great cognitive leap, I thought that would fit nicely with the purpose of November 11, but they didn’t ask me.)

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Irony watch 1

I surely cannot be the only person on the planet who chokes on the torrent of media coverage earlier this month that was… um, complaining about the torrent of media coverage earlier this month on three fronts (two of which we’ve already moved on from, and one which, I fear, will be with us for the next couple years at least) – (i) the latest Royal Squeeze, (ii) the instant addition of six children to a Jehovah Witness family in Vancouver and (iii) the beginning of the Pickton trial in BC. But with TV news humming away in the background over the course of each working day, sometimes it seems to me that your typical on-air TV news personalities wouldn’t recognize a bit of ironic scripting if it raced full-tilt across the studio floor, leapt up onto their desks, tore away their lavaliere microphones and launched into a loud rendition of “I Read the News Today, Oh Boy” by The Beatles.

In the first of the three above-mentioned stories, almost all of the coverage on this side of the water has been on the order of, oh my, isn’t it awful that the paparazzi, who are suspected of contributing to, if not outright causing the death of the Princess of Wales, are gathering in hordes to monitor the every move of the latest frequent date of a young Royal. (Yes, it’s really terrible. So leave the young lady alone, why don’t you?)

And in the second, the Canadian media (because it was, after all, a Canadian story) waxed mickle frustrated over the fact that the family has been unwilling, for some as yet to be [to the media, anyway] satisfactorily explained reason, to divulge their name or any details of the recent birth of sextuplets. Although – to this writing – no one (thankfully) among the journalists covering the multiple birth that I’ve seen has yet bleated, “But the public has a right to know!”, I’m just waiting for it.. CBC-TV’s Newsworld’s Nancy Wilson is among the most unsettling of the reporters, pitching questions to her on-site stringers that smack of, “Well I can certainly understand why the family would like to remain anonymous and hold onto their privacy, but [we at the CBC are going to do our level best to ensure that this just ain’t gonna happen!]

And Pickton? Well, suffice to say it fits the same execrable mold, but since I literally shut off my radio and TV, and turn to a wholly other newspaper page whenever the name is mentioned, I have no comment and you’ll hear no more about it here.

Irony watch 2 (or “You really can’t make this stuff up”)

A news item about Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay’s January 9 meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf reported, in all seriousness, that MacKay, when asked to assist Pakistan in developing ways to deter Taliban insurgents from nipping over to Afghanistan to shoot or blow up Canadian troops stationed there, responded thus: “MacKay said at a news conference in Islamabad that Canada is willing to help Pakistan improve its border security with Afghanistan by training [border] guards.” (cbc.ca website, January 9)

Now Canada, you may recall, is a country whose border guards seem almost proud of their collective agreement clause, which permits them – when they receive notice of a possible inbound threat such as an armed fugitive who has escaped from a US prison – to abandon their posts and, not to put too fine a point on it, run like hell.

Does one really need training to do that?

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Well Officer, it’s like this…

On a not-long-ago Wednesday evening, had you been driving or walking along my residential street, you would have seen me (in the glare of the streetlights, because it was already dark) walking down the middle of the road, pushing a rather large Boos Block kitchen trolley.

It’s not a long story, but there is a moral, so hence its place in this forum. A few weeks ago, we made the domestic decision to upgrade the cutting block-topped trolley we had in our kitchen because the previous one had become almost hopelessly wobbly and no longer matched what we wanted it to be. (It had become a surface on which we could actually pass a knife back and forth through something like a loaf of bread while having to walk gradually across the floor as the wobbly trolley merrily rolled at each push.)

The kitchen products company from whom we bought it had us registered in their files, because we have made other purchases there in the past. But it turned out they had our address wrong and here’s what I discovered. When a vendor is setting up a delivery file for you and asks only for your postal code – because that’s the controller they have on their file system – make damned sure you verify with them that your actual house number is also in their file. Because a postal code, you see, applies to a range of addresses, not simply to your unique home.

And here’s how the conversation went the day we arranged delivery:

THEY: And your postal code?
WE: [Postal Code]
THEY: Mr [my name]?
WE: That’s right.

(pause while a few tippy-taps are entered at “THEY”s half of the conversation.)

THEY: And your address is 488 [streetname]?
WE: No, our address is 520 [streetname].
THEY: Oh, sorry. We code our files by postal code and 488 is probably the street number at which your postal code begins. I’ll enter the correct address and make sure the delivery guys have it as well.

Well the thing about Baby Duck is there are no big mysteries because you, dear friends, family and readers, know all too well where one of my typical stories is going to go, doncha?

Yep, on my arrival home the day it was supposed to be delivered (the aforementioned Wednesday), the appointed hour came and went, but no trolley.

A phone call later, I was speaking to the cheery manager of the store’s shipping department who recognized my name and immediately launched into a story about how the guys had delivered the trolley and even managed to roll it into a position sheltered from the weather and was I happy with it?

“Well, it’s like this,” I replied, “It’s not here.”

There followed a perfect illustration of the phrase, “pregnant pause”. When she rediscovered her tongue, it was to convey a state that could only be described as flummoxed. In fact, her first five words were “But…”. All five of them. Add the fact that the entire delivery department had already gone home and she was just on the way out the door herself, and you have a situation where no one with the information was going to be available until start-of-business the next day.

So recalling the store encounter and postal code confusion, I stepped outside and first did a complete walkabout of our house, just in case their interpretation of “sheltered from the weather” meant under one of our backyard trees. But no, there was no trolley anywhere on our property. So down the street I went to 488 and sure enough, at the far end of their driveway, almost in their backyard, under a large sheet of ordinary corrugated cardboard, was the trolley.

There was no one home at 488, but I did notice a neighbour looking out her driveway-side window while I had been prowling about the premises looking for the trolley in the first place. When I knocked on her door, she answered and listened in great amusement while I described the reason for my visit to the driveway between her neighbour’s home and hers, and asked her please not to phone the police when she saw me wheeling a large trolley table down their shared driveway.

It’s now happily ensconced in our kitchen, none the worse for its having already logged more mileage in its first day out of the store than most kitchen trolleys travel in a year.

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And finally, an organization called “Safe Kids Canada” is in the news a lot these days because they advocate the mandatory, legislated use of helmets by kids and adults while… tobogganing.

This is their complete safe tobogganing manifesto, from their website:

“Sledding / Tobogganing:

Ensure that the hill is free of hazards - trees, rocks, bumps, fences and bare spots. Do not sled on ice-covered areas.

Ensure that the hill is situated away from roads, rivers or railroads and that there is plenty of room to stop at the bottom of the hill.

Look for a hill which is not too steep (less than 30 degrees is recommended for children) and has a long, clear runoff area.

Inspect the toboggan to ensure it is in good condition.

Use only proper sliding equipment with good brakes and steering. Inner tubes and plastic discs are not recommended because they are difficult to control.

Many tobogganing injuries are cold-related, such as frostbite and hypothermia. Heat loss is particularly significant in children under age 3 because their heads account for a larger proportion of their overall body size. Children should be dressed warmly in layers.

After tobogganing children should get out of wet clothes and boots quickly to prevent frostbite.

Young children should always be supervised by an adult. They should never toboggan alone.

The safest position to be in while tobogganing is kneeling. Sliding on your stomach, headfirst, offers the least protection from a head injury. Laying flat on the back increases the risk of injuring the spine or spinal cord.

Look out for the other guy - move quickly to the side and walk up and away from the sliding path after finishing a run.

Children should not toboggan at night.

Head injuries while sledding can be serious. Children should wear a helmet with a thin, warm cap underneath to protect ears from frostbite. A ski or hockey helmet is recommended, because they are designed for use in cold weather and for similar falls and speeds.”

I’m sorry but “Do not sled on ice-covered areas” ??? “Good brakes and steering” ??? “Inner tubes and plastic disks are not recommended because they are difficult to control”??? Are you people out of your frigging minds? You’ve just condemned absolutely everything that makes sliding fun, damn it!

The single most memorable sliding experience of my life was one truly hilarious weekend when a group of us adults went to a friend’s property and – yes, at night – went sliding down a quarter mile-or-so steeply sloped curve of a long driveway so ice-slicked it was like glass. By the time the slope began to level off, we were probably clocking something like 20 – 30 miles per hour, not that much when you set it next to the velocity of an Olympic skeleton sled, but pretty darned exciting nonetheless.

And it was only the next morning when I stood beside my car on level ground feeling distinctly like I was leaning backwards that I discovered the previous evening’s desperate braking in order to avoid being launched off the outside of the curve had worn fully three-quarters of an inch off both my boot heels.

I appreciate that Safe Kids Canada begins with a noble mandate. But recreational tobogganing and helmets go together like the proverbial fish and bicycle. And be honest now – has anyone among you ever seen a toboggan with a “braking system” any more complicated than dragging through the swiftly passing snow whatever of your major appendages is hanging over the edge?

Until next time…