John Linton ........acknowledging shameless plagiarism from Arthur Conan Doyle's short story - Silver Blaze.
I was reminded of this story because I received an email from a supplier account manager at 9.45 pm last night. It was a terse, and pointlessly obfuscative reply to a mild query I had made by email some two weeks previously.
I was having a quiet Saturday night (having had a day out driving a possible replacement to my aging car in the Blue Mountains on a pleasantly sunny Sydney Autumn day) and as has become my custom I leave my laptop on while relaxing and I reply to emails as they come in and deal with other on line issues as they arise in between more sensible leisure time pursuits.
The supplier concerned is not known, in my personal direct experience over many years, to have personnel who work beyond 'standard business hours' and if you count the endless "training sessions", RDOs, sick leave (this particular supplier apparently hires very illness prone personnel) and other 'events' getting any communications from them outside the hours of 10 am to 12.30 pm and 3.00 pm to 4.30 pm on week days (except public holidays) is unusual to the point that if it had been daylight I would have checked the sky for winged, plump pink animals.
To get an email sent at 9.45 PM on a SATURDAY is as unusual as the apearance of Halley's comet in the Southern night sky.
In terms of the subject matter of the email enquiry and its subsequent partial reply - there was no urgency that required a reply at such an unusual time and the reply itself was pointless in that it didn't address the second of two questions contained in the original enquiry which was the main thrust of the original enquiry.
I made a comment to Colonel Ross, sorry, Annette that I had received this curiously timed email but she showed no interest so I settled in to my corner seat of the Pullman car and before we reached Clapham Junction I had unravelled the mystery for him...I mean her. (Or actually after thinking about the unbeleivable concept of an acount manager for this supplier working late in to a Saturday night while getting two cups of coffee I was able to find the only reasonable explanation of why the dog didn't bark in the night).
Was the content of my email enquiry of such vital concern to the legal eagles at the supplier that they had worked tirelssly for the two weeks to arrive at thir view and, having validated their conclusions with outside SCs, deemed a response so important it had to be conveyed to the possible litigant at the very earliest moment?
Has a new 'regime' been put in place at this supplier that requires all sales (and I use that word lightly) personnel to work tirelessly at their desks throughout weekends and public holidays to ensure that their customer's slightest wish is thoroughly researched and then full information conveyed to their customerss irrespective of time or type or day?
Could the words 'customer service' have, via some telco version of the Rosetta Stone finally have been translated as meaning that when a customer asks a question you, supplier account manager, are required to actually provide either a reply or a progress report on a regular basis until the question has been fully answered to the customer's compete satisfaction?
Of course not. The reason that the dog didn't bark in the night Silver Blaze was apparently stolen from his stable was...........
.....that the supplier clearly had an email server failure which delayed emails submitted on the afternoon of Friday 16th from being sent until the problem was resolved late on Saturday Evening.
Elementary, my dear Watson (Annette). ....and I think there's still time for a last cigar before we reach Paddington.
I guess what incidents like this underline is that there is a huge difference between the people who work extraordinary hours to just make ends meet in this industry and the people who work for the major duopolists who earn large amounts of money working less hours a week than the average lazy uni student spends studying for his least favourite subject each semester.
Just another reminder of 'what's the point of being in the ISP business' if you aren't Telstra?
I must find an answer to that question in the not too distant future.