Cries of complaint and realisations of compromise

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 1,058 words - Tweet this

When I started writing this, I’d been watching the news of Eurostar announcing that they wouldn’t be running a service for the third day running. Predictably enough, this was accompanied by a whole slew of interviews with executives at Eurostar standing outside St Pancras explaining the obvious, alongside (as if they are equally credible or interesting) people whinging platitudinously.

When people are directly involved in something going wrong, they are not only more emotional, but also far more thoughtless and illogical. All those being interviewed could (or, perhaps, all that the news broadcasters chose to show) manage to say was along the lines of ‘It’s ridiculous that this has happened – we won’t be able to have Christmas as planned!’, or – far worse – ‘[I haven't cared to think about engineering for one second, but] it’s ridiculous that they can’t build a train to stand a bit of cold! Haha, I’m so clever!”.

I’ll get back to this in a moment, but first – this reminded me of two different occasions with very similar reactions.

Firstly – less similar, same reaction – last week my family and I were leaving the Marks & Spencer in Westfield, wherein you access the car park from M&S via a magnetic travelator. That day, one of them happened to have broken down. As I’m pushing our trolley away toward the incredibly easy and nearby solution lift, a woman started talking to me: “Unbelievable that they haven’t got it working so close to Christmas! Absolutely unbelievable…[etc.]“.

Well actually, no it’s not. For two reasons. Firstly; in all the times I’ve been (a lot), that was the single time it’s ever been faulty. Secondly; the machinery, the electricity supply and engineering behind it doesn’t care that you’re doing your Christmas shopping. The management, yes, are a different matter – but again, I’ll return to this soon.

Before that; the second occasion of which the the Eurostar news reminded me. It is in fact the most obvious example of this kind of behaviour: the snow at the beginning of 2009. People then also cried that it was “like a third world country”, “unbelievable”, and “ridiculous” that the government could not respond immediately and in full force with an array of snow-ready equipment.

David Mitchell said it then, and it’s perfectly true now: what would be truly ridiculous would be for the government to maintain a full fleet of weather-proof vehicles and equipment.

The point I’ve been delaying until now is just this. I think people need to realise that most things are in fact possible – they aren’t a certain way in reality not because it’s impossible, but because somebody has chosen for it to be that way. It’s also usually the correct way, no matter what people who have been temporarily inconvenienced by the decision think of it.

In each of the cases I’ve briefly described, it would be feasible to guarantee that the issue could be resolved more quickly when it occurs – or even prevent it in the first place. Westfield (or Marks & Spencer) could employ on-site engineers year-round to ensure that nothing inconveniences shoppers. Or, yes, they could employ them around the Christmas period – obviously the woman I’ve mentioned considered it particularly offensive for something to be broken at that time. Either way, it presents a cost. That cost will need to be absorbed by consumer (the shopper in this case) – and, I might add, all consumers, not simply the one’s taking particular issue with it. Of course, spread across so many people this will be so minimal that nobody would be likely to even notice it.

So let me look at another of the three examples I’ve used here. The snow/grit example is similar in that the cost would be spread across a large number of people (every single tax payer, in fact). However, it is different – as David Mitchell correctly pointed out – the cost to maintain a fleet of weather-proof machines would be monumentally great: most people would notice in a significant way.

Finally, I want to return to the example with which I began. The cost of building and maintaining Eurostar trains and tunnels which could adequately deal with all temperatures and weather conditions would be huge – much larger, I imagine, than the current cost of maintaining the Eurostar service. The difference here then is that the cost would be spread across only a relatively small number of people: the customers of Eurostar train journeys.

Eurostar could ensure their trains could operate in freezing conditions – but for the benefit of enabling a relatively very small number of trains to run to-schedule each year, it simply isn’t worth it. The individuals who are inconvenienced by happening to be on those few Winter trains clearly see it in a different context, and therefore believe that it would be worth the extra expense. But if they personally had to face the expense as a marginal cost added to the cost of their train ticket? (This is the only way this could work, obviously. The only other option is to charge significantly more for only Winter trains, which nobody would then be willing – able! – to pay for. In this case, it is again the case that it would not be worth weather-proofing trains.)

My unifying point here is that I think people ought to think more about the logistics of what lies behind the demands they make. They ought to realise that when they make comments like it being “ridiculous that Eurostar can’t have a train to handle to cold!” that not only is that simply not the case, but that it isn’t the case because decisions are made on two bases. These are: the fact that it isn’t only them as a single customer being considered in the decision, and that, to take the the reverse perspective; they very much are being considered as an individual customer in the decision. This latter point asks the question: “Would any of our current customers be willing or able to purchase train tickets at hundreds of times above the current cost?” – the answer, invariably, is a resounding “no”.

There is a reason behind every decision, however inconvenient it may be to individuals. If only people could think about this themselves for one moment before criticising the people who have.

Or, you know, maybe people just like complaining.