ENOUGH ALREADY WITH THE CHARM, PLEASE

RANT WARNING

So Peaches' mom is here for a few weeks and was kind enough to keep the boys overnight while Peaches and I headed off to a London hotel for a night of...sleep. It was delightful.

We did however, have the opportunity once again to experience that noteworthy English habit of offering civility in the place of competence. We ordered a romantic comedy on the pay-per-view system. It had an annoying tendency to skip ahead like a scratched DVD. After the third time we called down and the hotel's engineer appeared at our door to handle the situation.

He smiled. He apologized multiple times. He chatted with us about the pay-per-view system, the top ten hotel companies, Formula 1 racing, the investors that own the hotel, the artwork on the wall, the renovation program at the property, server sizes, the hotel's competitive advantages and disadvantages, how to reboot the system, work ethos, and more. He smiled the whole time and he apologized again and again. But what he did not do was fix the problem. This went on for about half-an-hour. I kept glancing at the clock thinking about how this was eating into precious bed time - which was the only thing I wanted to do if we were not going to be watching a movie.

I will not name the hotel, because this was almost the only drawback to an otherwise excellent experience and the positives outweighed the negatives. The food was good, the service was good, the room was ginormous and the interior was outstanding.

But why do the English insist on chatting instead of fixing? I know a purchasing officer responsible for arranging the tech cabling for a US Customs Agency office at an English port. He said he once phoned an IT consultancy to ask them if they could do the job. The answer to his question should have been a simple "No." But the guy delivering the message was so charming and polite that it took an hour of explanative and apologetic discourse to get off the phone. Not only did the purchasing officer have to keep shopping for the service, but he had lost a precious hour and was not an inch closer to getting his job done.

The village mentality is alive and well in England. I suppose I should be grateful. We are net beneficiaries of this quaint mentality. Even as foreigners here for only a few years, our local high-street chemist, florist, green grocer and pet shop proprietor know us, give us store credit and go out of their way to special order items for us, etc.

So who am I to complain?

But boy do I wish British Telecom, British Gas, and the high-speed internet provider and other big English companies could stop being so charming and polite and start delivering their services efficiently and hassle-free.