It is a home-office day today, as our daughter is ill and my wife is in meetings most of it and can't take care of her. There are benefits of working from home though, as it saves me about an hour of driving to and from the office, a clean shirt and a dollop of hair wax.
Speaking of clean shirts...
About a month ago our seven year old clothes dryer decided to stop working and the cost of repair was about half the price of a new one and there was no guarantee that the rest of it was going to last much longer anyway. So, I ordered a new one and was unsurprised to find that they are friggen expensive. Everything is these days and while the official inflation rate is one thing - I feel the reality on a lot of products is something quite different.
But, inflation rate aside, we have had to wait for the overpriced dryer for a few weeks and got to pay for the privilege of delivery and a premium to choose the time, as like above, even if home, there are meetings going on. So, despite paying for a morning delivery between 8 and 12 - they notified they will be delivering between 12 and 6, which was unsuitable but after several calls, they still wouldn't change it. What is the point of paying extra for a delivery time that they will not honor?
Bloody nothing.
This happened yesterday when I was at the office and in order to get the machine in the house, my wife had to have her parents come here and let them in and do all of the signing etc. Obviously, this wasn't the smoothest of procedures on short notice, but was the only way we could get it done.
We have had to get a lot of stuff delivered with the renovation materials and this kind of thing is common. It doesn't matter what it is these days, the delivery is a mess. One of the large orders for cupboards from IKEA was paid for delivery inside and they instead left it outside in the rain and we had to get the neighbor to help carry things in. Another was similar, but they ended up sending someone who couldn't carry the boxes inside anyway and we had to pay one of our tradespeople who happened to be working to help.
The problem is though, no one ever complains in Finland and therefore, all of these issues never get tracked, never registered and therefore get evaluated as "successful" despite conditions not being met, meaning failure. Finns don't give feedback on much at all, meaning that failures don't make it to the ears that have failed. For example, if a meal at a restaurant was overcooked, cold, salty or whatever, when the waiter asks at the end of the meal, they do not commit either way.
It is actually kind of funny, as the waiter will ask "tasted?" and the reply is "tasted". The waiter doesn't actually ask how it tasted, so I guess the noncommittal reply suits the question, but it doesn't give any useful feedback to the conversation, meaning that the kitchen will never know that they are making food customers love or hate and will have to infer this from their clientele habits, by which time it might be too late to take corrective action.
But somethings can't be voted on with feet. For example, as of July, everything that comes into Finland from outside the EU has to go through customs and requires the payment of a handling fee to the Post Office, even if they don't touch it. It also requires customs clearance and taxes on goods, even if taxes have already been paid at purchase. This puts a massive cost on goods where for example, my brother sent some stuff for Smallsteps' birthday and it ended up costing three times a much as the value of the goods once the shipping and customs costs were paid. Insane. But, this is what they can do to protect themselves from competition and go back to the good old days of a captured population with little choice.
The Corona situation has allowed larger corporations and governments to put a stranglehold grip on society and limit the options to the ones that benefit them the most, with the irony that many are thankful for their actions.
"You can have your freedom, as long as you do things the way we want them to be done."
Thank you! Thank you Masters!
Finns are very good at following government orders, which is due to history. AS for the most part, the governments have done a pretty good job in stabilizing the country economically and socially. The problem is, that now that people are conditioned to the assumption that governments work in their best interest, they keep doing what they are told, even when not in their best interest as individuals or society. All of the "little" changes to the way things function might seem insignificant, but they are mounting up and compounding to have large impacts on how we live our lives.
My daughter is barely ill with a runny nose, yet can't go to daycare unless we have her tested for Covid, even though all of the other kids have had the same thing and none of them have had Covid. But, parents keep getting their kids tested so that they can leave them at daycare, instead of staying home with them like we do. This means, all of the parents who refuse to constantly have the tests done, will continually be at home with their children far more often too. This has very real implications and impacts on employment conditions for individuals, making it an indirect economic punishment with consequences.
However, just like the knock-on effects of a changed delivery time, not many seem to care about all of the consequences that are going to arise from how society has been forced into change, even if those changes aren't necessary. There are so many things affected that it is impossible to predict all of the implications involved and even in hindsight, I believe that a lot of what actually happened will fall between the cracks and the negative consequences swept under the rug. But, this is the world we enable, one where rather than giving real feedback, we just do what we are told and put up with the shit, because it is easier to go along to get along - Even when the path leads to not getting along well at all.
That's lunch.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]