Who's the other guy's other guy?
Why are companies that claim omniscience blind to other viewpoints?
I worked for a bank in which every document signed with a client, which they insisted on calling customers, after deciding five years previously to insist on calling them clients (I mean ...?), they talked about “the bank” and “the contract partner.” I said to them, '“But aren’t WE the contract partner to the customer, or client, or whatever you want to call them?” “No, we’re not; we’re the bank.”
When that bank lends money to buy a house, it’s the bank that invests in property. Excuse me? Yes, not the “contract partner.” Well, it isn’t, according to the contract partner, from the contract partner’s view of things, whose contract partner is the bank and who thinks it’s him, the contract partner, the bank’s contract partner, that is, that’s making the investment and not the bank, his contract partner; but it is from the viewpoint of the contract partner’s contract partner, which is the bank, even though its contract partner is paying back all the money to his contract partner, the bank, plus a whole wadge of interest on top, and it’s the contract partner that will be claiming the mortgage interest allowance on his tax return, not the bank, his contract partner, that will be claiming it on its tax return; all because the contract partner’s contract partner takes a funny view of what a contract partner is. Doesn’t simplicity get complicated sometimes? If you needed a moment to think about that, then I can tell you, so did I.
The point: businesses often see things only from one point of view, while professing omniscience as to how things are.
Here’s another:
- Get them to home work.
- Yes, the government says it spreads less germs.
- So, are they all at home?
- Yes.
- What they doing?
- Dunno, they’re at home.
- Well, we can't have that, how do we know they’re working?
- We don’t.
- Get them back in here and appoint 45 new supervisors. With stop watches.
Bloody idiots.