Common Sense Where Has It Gone?

By Ronald A. Crane

If I may be allowed a modest rant about the lack of common sense, let me vent a little steam. Firstly let me say I do not believe most people who fail to exhibit common sense in their dealings with others do it maliciously or just to upset people. It usually is a lack of a thought process or a misguided one.

We all have been subjected to automated telephone-answering options. Some are in fact well thought out and provide an escape route (“press 0 at anytime to get an operator”), but some completely lack common sense. Ontario Hydro requires you to put in your account number by touchtone before you can go any further in the process of reporting a power failure. Does this make a lot of sense when my lights are out, it’s dark and I had enough trouble finding the phone never mind my last bill.

This sort of half-thought out process is never more evident than in large bureaucracies such as governments and large institutions. It seems that in the pursuit of “checks and balances”, “avoidance of mistakes” and “protection of our clients/shareholders” process has trumped thinking. I find myself more and more frequently running into people who are not allowed to make decisions and whose actions and responses are programmed on a computer. The attempt at trying to explain that the document or information requested is not relevant to the particular case is always met with a polite “well it’s on my list and I can’t help you without it”. More troubling is the number of times I have clients complaining that banks or other institutions refuse to recognize legal documents such as powers of attorney because “its not on our form”. Using “their form” does save mistakes and means their employee does not have to think, but it sure gets their customer upset.

Maybe it would not be so bad if we were allowed to play by the same rules. I often make applications that require documents, reports or information from different parts of the same institution or government agency. The usual process requires separate communications to each person or department at extra cost and time. Sometimes these different departments are literally down the hall from one another, but the policy of the institution requires you “follow the process”. So I get one department of the City of Oz asking to get information from another department in the City of Oz. Don’t they have any means of communication with each other? Aren’t they in the business of serving their client’s? Oh sorry, stupid question. It’s not a question of objecting to paying a reasonable fee for reasonable service. It’s the lack of common sense.

I once attended at a large municipal office to locate were my long delayed application was physically in the system. I found it on one person’s desk who advised me it was next to go to his supervisor to be finally approved. That supervisor was literally two desks away, however the letter could not be walked over it had to go through the Municipality’s internal mail system, which would take two weeks to process because of volume.

Next time your bank or public utility calls asking for information, try telling them that information is known only to your spouse not you and they will have to send a written request, proof of identification, a bank draft or certified cheque for $100.00 and the response time is six weeks.

Here is a suggested way to program your voice mail. We can’t be bothered answering right now so Press 1 if you have nothing better to do, press 2 if you are a telemarketer and sulfide gas will be emitted from your end of the phone, press 3 if you’re related, but hang up if you’re related and want money, otherwise leave a message at the tone.