Airport Process
Because of my last career as a Systems Auditor, sometimes I know too much about whether a process is working or not. What you do not know will not hurt you, but if you do know, then it is easy to get frustrated because things could be better. But sometimes it comes in handy to know more if the only way out of a situation is to take over the process and do the job yourself!
Getting a new access card for the airport for my volunteering proved to be an interesting challenge. The process should not take long I thought. Show up at the front counter, get your picture taken, a scan of your eyes for security, and then leave your finger prints behind, while an admin form gets completed for the record. Ten minutes tops, once its your turn. But when it takes two hours for your turn to come up, you have time to become quite observant for what is happening as to people and process.
First of all, I stood in line at the front counter for 20 minutes, then waited in the last remaining chair in a crowded room until my lettter 'N' was called so they could service my request. Whenever it was someone's turn, the process often took 20 minutes instead of 10. Then there was a time when one of the admin clerks took off for a mid morning break for a few minutes while everyone sat around waiting. We watched her leave! I suppose this was necessary as she came back with her water bottle nicely filled up and maybe she had some other business to do, and so I was understanding.
As I was retired, I just went with what was happening as I had nothing better to do but wait, although I did consider walking out, like others, and hoping that the place would not be as busy next time. But I was not comfortable with coming again since the lineup could be even worse, and so I stuck it out. Everyone else who stayed were employees and they did not seem to mind the wait, as if they were expecting the time lag and they were used to this administration bottleneck. I thought of all of the productive time that could be realized if they could turn around their clients more timely!
I studied an airplane pilot when he came in, all nicely uniformed in his ultra white pressed shirt and cap complete with stripes, and his rollaway black bag that he needed for work. I watched him stand perfectly straight in line completely expressionless, and he had the look of a professional on a mission. He waited...and he waited...and he waited (line was not moving)...and he waited. Then he pulls out his cellphone and dials a number. Within 30 seconds, a lady comes out from behind and greets the pilot “Hi, how are you?!”. Pilot responds with “Fine...my flight leaves in one hour”. Since he is the pilot and everything, and so rightfully so it is his turn next and they were able to deal with him quickly.
I could tell it was getting close to my turn since the room had almost turned over with new clients; therefore I did move once to get closer to the front so that I would not miss when the letter 'N' was announced. I jumped up a bit too fast perhaps in my haste when my letter was called since it seemed to startle or awaken others from their slumber, helped out when I caused my chair to move a bit and bash into a wall!
Once behind the door and officially in the back, this lady was definitely checking my mood and this must have been common procedure to get a reading of the person coming in to see if agitated, complaining, or just simply tense from the wait. I said I was having a 'bad hair day' for picture taking and she interpreted this to mean I was not in the best of mood and then spent some unecessary dialogue practising psychology on me as opposed to getting about the task for what needed to be done. Was she a counsellor or a clerk? When she started completing the online form, she could not find my security clearance from the government. She finally found it just as I was about to say 'you have to have it as I received an email indicating my security clearance had been approved.'
I noticed the system had a very slow response time. I could tell she was using a workstation connected to a server located elsewhere probably using some type of obsolete proprietary operating system and application. Sure enough, when filling in the form, the system went down from what she explained was a server crash! She apologized and said no worries as IT had shown her how to 'reboot', and so I concluded this must be a regular occurance. I was starting to figure out why it was taking so long to complete the process because of the system she was working with. She pressed the reboot button. I had learned when Manager of IT in my hey day that rebooting can fix a lot of issues, but the system was already down. After the reboot completed and she tried to access the record, the system produced an error message. I concluded that my record must now be corrupt. So she rebooted the system a second time and it still showed the same error.
She tried to work with my record to complete my file, but the system would not allow her to proceed. She sheepishly exclaimed “oh, I am so sorry, this must be so frustrating for you, but I need to get IT to look at your record and fix before we can get your file completed. IT will need 24 hours to get back to me and so you will have to come back another day and then we will be able to try again. Sorry, but I have tried to get your information into the system twice and have not been able to complete”. She looks at me with a forced smile waiting for my reaction, I look at her deciding what to do next since after all I am a volunteer with an organization noted for its friendliness!
Having been there for over two hours already, I was not liking her suggestion! My adrenalin from work days kicked in! Wake up Adrian! I could see that normal procedure for them is to get IT involved to ' fix the problem' since they are so procedure driven. They cannot solve any issue 'out of the box' themselves. I became IT and chose to ask her to try to enter my details a third time, which caught her completely by surprise as she was not expecting this for an answer. But because of my long wait and being a trooper to provide customer satisfaction, she did agree to try one more time.
I asked her first what exactly was the error message, and after inspection she responded that the system was asking her to 'cancel' the current request and re-enter the details. So I asked her to cancel the request and re-enter my record again from the start. She paused to digest what I said, then proceeded to cancel the request as the system suggested, and re-enter the details, like your passport number, etc., ...and the system worked perfectly fine! So they must not read any IT driven error message and just give up! She needed someone to tell her to 'cancel the request and re-enter'!
I cannot belive the client had to solve an admin problem in order to get the job done! I must still have it, but yet the solution was so obvious?! You know, sometimes people and IT cannot communicate! In this case, the lady no doubt has strengths in other areas, probably as a counselor, but finds herself doing admin and data entry duties. So bizarre, but at least I did not have to go back and wait a further two hours to maybe experience the same problem again since the corrupt record might still exist!
The IT Helpdesk must get frustrated when they call for help over error messages and so they let them reboot their own server when it goes down. Another thought that crossed my mind based on experience was this: To fix a record, IT must go into the 'back door' since they would not know how the actual application works. But as determined, all the user needs to do is cancel the request in the application, which is what the error message is asking them to do. This represents a much safer course of action as it safeguards the referential integrity of the database.
This organization needs me! No wait, been there and done that, forget it. Having solved an IT problem and getting my new access card with more security privileges, I walked out of the waiting room jammed full of people, with all eyes glaring at me. It took 25 minutes to complete 'my process' before the next letter got called. I know what they are thinking: so what was 'his problem'?!