A good day

I have very little excitement in my life at the moment, so bear with me.

I got a 'no'! I'm so happy. I finally got a reply for a job and it was a 'no'. Even though "Thank you for responding, however your application had been declined" is not the best news, it's progress. It's better than thinking my job applications are being sent into a void of unopened emails with CVs attached. I imagine a lot of my responses are floating around in space like the melodies of Will.I.Am  At one stage I thought I'd have better luck posting my letters, and then I giggled at how preposterous such a thought was - to put this into context you have to understand that the South African Post Office's sorting office in Gauteng has been on strike for weeks. I sent my boyfriend a Valentine's Day card and he has yet to see it.

I know a lot of adverts say, "If we have not contacted you by such-and-such a date, consider your application unsuccessful." Which I'm sure is the best way to save time when it come to hiring and recruiting. But if you're someone like me, who has had little, in fact, no success when it comes to job hunting, this was a serious turning point. It was just so nice to have a little bit of interaction, even if it was an unsuccessful application. The fact that someone took the time to open my CV, give it a read and then send a reply containing 'no' was so much more motivating than the never-ending silence.

On another completely unrelated, but happy note...

I had such a pleasant day as a consumer.

Last night, I made my easy and loved falafels for the parental unit and myself. When I was near finish, my dad started loading the pita breads into the oven. In my house, we have better luck with the lotto than we do with pitas. For the last couple of months, the pita breads we have bought and thrown into the oven remain flat piece of hard crust on the outside and a soft doughy-goo on the inside. They never rise and yet we continue to favour these unsuccessful pitas over wraps. After many weeks of perseverance we had a most wondrous night! My mum had picked up a pack of Global Wrapps pitas.

My mum and I are huge fans of the brand. When we can, we will frequent their restaurants and order a haloumi and avo wrap and a BBQ chicken and potato wrap for my mum and I respectively. And on this particular Sunday night, we had struck gold with puffed up pitas for our easy Carte Blanche dinner in front of the TV. This week, however, was an entirely different experience.

So as I was saying, my dad had started chucking them in the oven when he noticed some of the pitas had turned into hosts to some unsavoury guests. Green patches of mold had come up on the sides of the last three pitas in the packet. And I'm not talking about a slight case of mold you would happily digest if it was the last slice of bread.

Check it out! The green on the packet matches the green on the pita. Now that's branding.

This was a full scale invasion of an ecosystem. So we ate the three best looking ones.

The very next day, I walked into Checkers, not to throw a fit, but to politely bring to their attention the green facts. I told them we ate three - we had to, there was no other starch in the house - and that we had double checked the date of expiry. I think I was quite polite in asking them for a refund and the manager was happy to do so. He was so happy to do so, he also gave me a fresh new pack. So, thank you Checkers for your understanding and fabulous customer relations.

Too many times, as consumers, we are immediately on the defensive. Even today, I was trying to remember sections of the Consumer Protection Act on my way there in case I'd have to drop some law knowledge - what little I know - on the manager. I've been a cashier and had a woman spew the line, "I know my rights as a consumer," across the counter. I've also seen a woman demand petrol money for her travels back to the store where a packer had forgotten to include an item in her grocery bag.

We are far too defensive and sometimes a quiet conversation can be a far more pleasant experience than the one that can be riddled with accusations. Who knows? You might get a free packet of pitas for your manners.

An unemployed youth's nightmare

You know you're in serious unemployment trouble when you realise you had a Martha Stewart day. No joke.

I started off my day cleaning the kitchen. I always hear a couple of sarcastic comments from my mom when she arrives home and walks into last night's post-dinner mess. Granted, I could do a little more around the house, but this morning my parents were blessed with a daughter who rolled out of bed with a housewife attitude.

I packed the dishwasher, washed-up, wiped the sides and threw in a load of towels. I then showered, donned an ankle-length floral dress and I was off to the shops by 9:30am. I picked up all the pieces I needed for my baking and dinner plans. As soon as I was home, I was throwing on another load of washing and toasting oats and almonds for my granola bars.

They do taste really good.

Once I'd finished my baking - including washing up - I was on the net looking for tutorials on knitting. I'm not even going to try and explain myself on that one.

My only redeeming quality of the day came at 2pm when Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan, delivered his budget speech. I was sitting in front of the TV with my knitting.

I'm hoping to knit a head band, or it might become Winston's scarf.

At 5pm, I launched back into full Martha Stewart mode and I was cooking my babotie before Master Chef Australia came on MNet.

And here's my babotie which I am quite proud of.

I'd mentioned how Martha Stewart my day was to my mom and then I received this email:

Apart from the Print Screen and Paint job, this photo has not been doctored . I really did get an email about the best advice Martha Stewart ever received.

I just realised I took pictures of my food and Instagrammed them, I'm twenty-something and I'm knitting, and I blogged about it. I'm becoming a hipster. And I'm going to include a photo of my dogs:

I need a job.

Customer experience

I have decided that for every blog post where I want to moan about something, a compliment will be included. I don’t want sound like every other South African who has access to a keyboard and modem and reduce my blog to the workings of the News24 comments section. So instead, I’d like to remind us of the good in this country in the hopes of encouraging a better attitude about things. While at the same time, discouraging the acceptance of mediocrity - a point, I believe, Jenny Crwys-Williams touched on today during her show. 

We often get so caught up in the negative – like Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp – and forget about the positive – Ramphele’s new gang and finally everyone else is talking about a different Oscar. Sorry, the Agang joke is so over done.

So I will start this little post with my complaint and finish with a compliment.

Last Thursday night, I was reminded of how the customer experience isn't always at the top of every establishment's list. My dad and I went to Fishaways in Midway Mews. I loved the Fishaways in Grahamstown and figured I’d continue my patronage with the one in my area. But after my experience I won’t go back and I won’t stay quiet about it either.

As I greeted the woman who took my order, I immediately felt like my walking in there was the worst thing that could have happened to her that day. I felt completely unwelcome as I tried to substitute the salad in my hake wrap for coleslaw – it offers a crunchier culinary experience, where as the soggy tomato salad fails every time. I didn't get to enjoy the coleslaw and bit into a hake wrap swimming in tomato juices.

Now, I might just sound like some middle class arsehole pissed off about a stuff up to her order, but that’s not where I get angry. I get irritated when I'm made to feel like an unwanted presence in the room. And this is not a problem that is localised to the Fishaways at Midway Mews. It permeates every retail business in South Africa. 

I lived in the Eastern Cape for four years and I shopped at both Pick n Pay and Checkers in Grahamstown. I have also shopped at both of those stores in Gauteng and the customer experience is lacking. I’m not asking to be treated like the Queen and her corgis. I’m asking to be treated like a customer who's patronage is good enough and valued. I hate feeling like I don’t belong in a shop. The problem is many South Africans don’t have the option of waltzing into Woolworths where a simple ‘Hello, how are you’ is a given. Even as an unemployed youth, I don’t have the option to shop at Woolworths – the only time I’m there is to swap a gift someone has bought for me, usually for a larger size after the Christmas season.

Don’t think that my gripe is just with Checkers, Pick n Pay and Fishaways, it’s amongst all retailers. And it's time to stop accepting mediocrity.

I know being a teller is tough – I've been there, done that & I still have the t-shirt. I understand most of, if not all the pressures that come with dealing with customers. You can get some real wankers who deserve a kick in the teeth to remind them they aren't the Queen – but of course you can’t do that. But there is the misunderstanding that a teller or cashier's job is unimportant and one mustn't forget that they are the last stop before the customer leaves with their goods.

On the plus side, I’m still loving my customer experience with Mango. It’s almost three weeks later and I’m still thinking about my return trip.

A perfectly sublime trip with Mango. I imagine this picture was taken while gliding over the Eastern Cape. This picture was, of course, taken in flight mode. Thank you, Mango!

I can be an anxious traveler and this was the first time I’d be given the responsibility of a hire car. I worried about checking-in and whether I had the correct documentation and if my bag was going to arrive on the other end – listen to me, I sound like I jet across the country. Hardly.

I was taking my brother to Rhodes for his first year and we were cutting registration a little fine, considering we were only going to be there on Sunday afternoon. Everything went fine and I dropped my brother off and I was back at PE airport the very next day. I remember walking in and seeing a large tour group from Ghana here for the Afcon. They were on my flight to Joburg and were a pretty large group. I was about to get into the queue with the avid supporters, before a woman in an orange Mango top intercepted my trolley and was guiding me to the express queue. I guess they figured they’d try and speed things up by keeping the tour group to one teller and the rest of us to another teller. The woman at the counter, also in orange, was very polite and chit-chatted while handling all my checking-in particulars. The previous woman offered to take away my trolley once I’d checked in my bags. Boarding was quick, I had a whole row of seats at the back of the plane to myself and I made a new friend, Alex, from Ghana.

I know it was something so small, but I felt like I was treated to the business or first class experience of SAA and BA travelers. It was great and that flight still puts a smile on my face three weeks later. Thank you, Mango.

A Little List

My Gran used to always say she had a "little list" for my dad. These were things she needed him to pick up at the shops and possibly do around the house. Her little lists became my mum's little habit and I figured it was a great heading for this post. As this is the first post of its kind on my blog, it might be a good idea to define it.
A Little List will be a collection of random thoughts. They are just some ideas about the world we live in summed up in a few short sentences on topics of an important and less important nature.

1. I experienced a great deal of satisfaction last week Sunday when I had a bath heated by our new solar geyser. That long soak felt like a big eff you to Eskom and the City of Johannesburg after we had two power failures in 24 hours.

2. In general, South Africans drive badly. In Joburg, I feel I'm under constant pressure to not STOP at STOP streets. Maybe it's just me, but I take pleasure in following the rules of the road, because it pisses drivers off.

3. What a fall from grace. Once the whole saga is over and whether he's found guilty or not, Oscar Pistorius is the only one who knows what happened. We will always question his actions and his story.

4. If you think about it, when your hazard lights are on, they are off half of the time.

5. From reality shows like Wipe Out USA to Beyond Scared Straight, the reality show screech is everywhere. Jenna Marbles makes a valid point about this sound effect:

6. Do you think Julius Malema ever reads motivational quotes? You know, the ones that are set against a picturesque landscape like this one: 

7. I wish I could reason with my dog Winston. Everyday I wish he could just understand what I go through at 4:30 every morning when he jumps on my bed. 

The plaster metaphor

There's a spot on Allan Dale Road, between Harry Galaun Drive and Grieg Street, that I believe demonstrates the kind of approach we take when dealing with problems. This spot on Allan Dale is in a dip that receives a lot of water and, often enough, the excess water doesn't drain away. If anyone has had the pleasure of racing down Allan Dale, you'll know that those coming from Kyalami Race Track will make a wide berth for a pothole who sheds its winter coat every summer. This evil little bugger is only encouraged by the mass of trucks and 4x4s that wikkel on by.

However, after the rainy season, when the Highveld approaches the dry cold snaps of winter, men in overalls  bring their tar and gravel to fill the hole and keep it snug as a bug for the cold months. But as soon as that first Joburg thunder storm hits, the tar washes off like the excess weight of a Matric girl about to go on vac.

As a local living in the vicinity of this pothole, I know this little process has been on repeat ever since I can remember. And what the people who repair the road don't realise, or maybe they do and it's not their department, is that there is a small river underneath this part of the road where drainage is clearly very poor. And each year, they stick a plaster over this pothole instead of addressing the underlying problem. 

I feel this small problem is reflected in areas like our education system, where the concern is on the Matrics and their pass rate, but what about the earlier phases of education? We're doing everything to increase the Matric pass rate by looking at helping students in Grade 12, but maybe we need to make a little more effort with our earlier grades. By the time Matric rolls round, there is less than a year for exam preparation; when we could have avoided this pothole by ensuring children have the skills to cope with highschool. 

Of course, I am merely glossing over all the issues with our education system which has been ranked 132th out of 144 countries according to the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013. 

Another one of our problems we seem to approach with a small band aid in the hopes of fixing everything, is the massive number of road accident deaths after every Festive season. Between 1 December 2012 and 8 January 2013, 1 465 people died in the 1 221 fatal accidents recorded. This means 37 people died each day during the silly season. The cartoon plaster in this case saw the number of deaths drop by 10 - note the absence of a percentage sign.

According to this report from eNews Channel Africa (ENCA), the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) started their campaign late and the leading cause of road accident death is alcohol. I agree that drunk drivers and drunk pedestrians are a major concern, we also cannot excuse a whole host of other issues that take place on our roads. The easy things the cops can look out for are drunk driving, speeding and poorly maintained vehicles, but there are hardly any officers around to punish bad driving. It's easy to snap a pic of a speeding motorist and send them the fine in the mail, it's harder to nab a bad driver for dangerous over-taking. 

From what I witnessed when I drove to and from Plett this New Year's and the countless trips I've taken to and from Rhodes University, there are a number of drivers who over-take when it is far too dangerous. On my way back from Plett, I witnessed a driver in a BMW X6 overtake six cars. To a lot of long distance drivers, solid lines, blind rises and sharp turns mean nothing to them. 

So, to the RTMC and traffic officers, please stop reaching for the Elastoplast box on the shelf. Sticking more officers in the shade to collect pictures of speeding number plates is not the answer. 

On the whole, we need to start tackling the underlying problem. Potholes, our education system, road deaths and many other issues deserve more attention as opposed to the plasters you keep in your first aid kit. There's more to these issues. If you don't agree with me, just frequent Allan Dale more often and maybe you'll understand this metaphor.