Thursday, August 7, 2008
Interesting time keeping
In India, stuff happens when it happens. This is not the same time as when it is supposed to happen. Yesterday, for example, I was told at 10 am that someone would be right up to fix my blocked drain in the bathroom. I was also told to expect someone to come and fix my telephone (I could receive calls, but not make them) at about 1 o'clock. No-one came to fix my drain, and at 5.30 a man who spoke as much English as I did Hindi came to look at the telephone. Our friend Raj, who speaks great Hindi AND English, had logged our telephone fault with the phone company, so I would have expected the man who came to fix the phone to know what I wanted fixing. This expectation proved to be wrong. Raj and his wife Nitti weren't home, so I tried to mime "I can receive calls, but I can't make them". I also tried to make an out-going call, so he could hear what I hear when I do (no ringing at all, just an engaged type tone). This didn't work, and the man said something to me, I have no idea what, and left. Rod tells me, that's what it's like in India.
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2 comments:
It sounds exactly the same as the service here. I had a dead phone for several days. We called and reported the fault, the first three times we failed to understand they were declaring it our problem. On the fourth attempt we worked out this was what they were saying and took time to argue. Indeed when we finally got an engineer and went through it all again the wire was broken at the pole. A bit beyond my normal fixing range. I am very glad we didn't have to go through all of that in a strange language too.
I'll echo Ferret and say that it doesn't sound all that different from here... I had a phone call with someone who spoke almost no English and just about managed to log the problem - can't remember what it was now, but I do remember thinking that it would behoove them to get someone who spoke English to take the calls...
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