Monday, December 19, 2011

While my patience is tested...

What happens when you tell someone what you want done and not why you want it done??
You get exactly what you asked for, which is often not quite what you wanted.

Classic example:

Often in India, in big stores, there are several people buying clothes, and several who want to try a piece, before they pay for it and buy it. Fair enough... Some of us are indecisive... annoying, but acceptable. Some people(I have just noticed women, may be men too), want to try all the clothes available in the store, before they decide which pair of socks they like. And more often than not they have someone waiting outside the trial room, they would model for in all the clothes. Others behind in the queue, may die of old age waiting, before one is done trying all the combinations of this jeans, with that T-shirt, and that shirt and that jacket over it...

Hence, the stores made a rule "No body is allowed to take more than 3 garments into the trial room". Good job. They also posted guards in front of all trial rooms, checking that nobody took more than 3 pieces with them. Impressive.


What they did not do was tell these guards the purpose of the whole exercise.


Now the scene is Customer A goes to the trial room, with exactly three pieces. Guard happily allows this. She tries the first one, and comes of to display to her boyfriend/husband/girlfriend/cousin/sister/mom/aunt/neighbor/.... and they decide it doesn't look nice, so she changes to the next piece, hands over the first piece to her accomplice to put back and get another one. She merrily tries all garments available in the store, flipping back the discarded ones with untried ones... having exactly three pieces at any point.

Stated criteria met: Yes

Objective met: No.

And some say information must be shared only when needed...