Two Bits – Are we too used to bad service?

The boiling frog is an anecdote describing a frog slowly being boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in cold water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death.
I’ve never tried this and don’t intend to, though the story illustrates what many believe, that we are subjected to so many failures in our society that we are like frogs in boiling water: we don’t know how bad our situation is.
I’ll must tell you what happened to me recently. I needed a new motherboard for a laptop. The local price was R3750 but I could get it online from Texas for R1500, including shipping. I ordered in mid-November and opted for the slower shipping, which they said would take six weeks.
Last week – then nine weeks later – I emailed the supplier and asked them where it was. They replied that they had tracked it to the Ballito post office, where it had been since early January! We collect mail there every day but they couldn’t tell us about a parcel?
Anyhow, I emailed the supplier in the US and said thanks, I’ve got it.
If this was Facebook, the headline now would read: YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT! Well, what happened next was the supplier replied that ‘because of the inconvenience I had suffered’, they would refund me the $30 (R400) shipping fee! Whaaaaaaaat!
What inconvenience? We are completely used to inefficiency, but apparently Americans are not. In their view, they had failed to deliver on time so refunded me even though I had not complained.
We are so surrounded by inefficiencies that it becomes too much effort to complain constantly. For example, last year I was terribly impressed when Telkom fixed my broken ADSL line within a few days. A week ago it went down and even though it was only fixed this Tuesday, I feel grateful that it was done at all!
Potholes, broken traffic lights, badly painted roads, overflowing sewage, unread meters, poor workmanship. We are surrounded by inefficiency. Travellers come back from Australia, New Zealand and other parts and will tell you with great wonder that everything there works!
Oz and the land of constant rain suit many down to the ground but some, only some, will add sotto voce that those societies, because of endless rules, are terribly restrictive and even boring. They miss the excitement of their mother country.
So why do those of us living here choose to stay? Too lazy to move? Can’t afford to? What about this for a novel thought – we like it! The place gets under your skin.
Where else can you buy a newspaper, airtime, wire toys and souvenirs, flowers, cellphone chargers, countless other things and have your windscreen cleaned all at one place – a robot!
Where can you find the diversity unequalled by any other country – our wildlife, our plant kingdom, our marine life, our scenery, the multitude of outdoor sports, the wonderful weather and, above all, the diversity of our people speaking 11 different languages and living diverse lives in diverse homes.
Where else can you have an abortion, make your penis larger, improve your sex life, become rich and successful, place a curse on your enemy, communicate with your ancestors and chase the tokoloshe away all at that one-stop shop – the witchdoctor?
In spite of all the bad, I love it!
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The minister of defence told President Zuma that two Brazilian soldiers had been killed near the South African embassy in Rio de Janeiro.
“Oh no,” gasped the President, “what a tragedy. What a terrible calamity for Brazil.”
When he saw the puzzled looks on the faces of his cabinet, Zuma leant across to his private secretary and whispered, “Ehh, exactly how many is a brazilian?”