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Accountability sinks

(aworkinglibrary.com)
517 points l0b0 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.3s | source
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rougka ◴[] No.41893123[source]
I remember experiencing this in one of the German airports/airlines and having that exact thought.

It was this fully automated airport, where the checkin is self serviced and you only interact with computers.

Eventually, when I inserted my boarding pass I had a printed piece of paper back that said that they had to change my seat from aisle to midseat

I then tried to find someone to talk to the entire way, but computers can only interact in the way the UI was designed, and no programmer accounted or cared for my scenario

The ground attendant couldn't have done anything of course because it wasn't part of the scope of her job, and this was the part of germany where nice was not one of their stereotypes.

Eventually I got a survey a week later about a different leg of the flight, so could I really complain there? that one was fine? I had a paranoid wonder if that was intentional

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nh2 ◴[] No.41893889[source]
Germany is somewhat rubbish.

I arrived at the train station in the night after 6 hours train journey. German Railways app shows there will be my final leg train in 45 minutes. I wait in the cold at night, sitting in the station building because it's warmer there. 5 minutes before departure I go on the platform. The local display shows no train, even though the all still shows it. I waited for nothing.

Syncing the app with the train station? Somebody else's problem.

In half an hour there should be a replacement bus for another cancelled train. There are no signs in the app or the station that indicate where that bus is to be found. You just need to know.

Putting sings for replacement buses due to degraded service that's long planned and already happening for 2 months? Somebody else's problem.

An old man asks if the bus will allow to catch the train connection at its destination. The bus driver bitches at him for asking that question -- not his job. Somebody else's problem.

Training the bus driver that, being an official replacement of a train, he needs to know that, clearly also somebody else's problem than that of the German Railways.

It's pitch black outside, the windows are opaque due to moisture, so I can't tell where we are even though I was born the area and lived here for 18 years. The bus driver makes no announcements about the stops, there is no display. Knowing when to request a stop to get off? Somebody else's problem.

The bus is ice cold for an hour. When am old lady gets off and tells the bus driver that it was freezing all journey, he asks "well what can you do". Bewildered she answers "turn on the heating"? He didn't expect that. He seemed to think that everything except driving was somebody else's problem.

This is just one night's bus journey story. I also got my SIM card deleted and a parcel was lost in the subsequent week. Documenting here the amounts of "somebody else's problem" I encountered in their customer support hotlines is somebody else's problem for me for now.

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1. valval ◴[] No.41923762[source]
I used to work with German people (I’m Finnish) and despite being pleasant people, simple things took a long time. It was always something to do with the responsible person not being available, perhaps on holiday or sick leave, and it wasn’t possible for anyone else to take over their responsibilities.

I got the feeling that papers were being pushed around from desk to desk until a vacant desk came along and progress stalled.

In the same job, I worked with Americans. Very nice people and super easy to get along with. Always friendly and with a healthy sense of humor. A certain lightness of heart was always present even when dealing with urgent or negative matters. Only thing was that they made a lot of mistakes that often didn’t seem accidental — I saw a bit of negligence, along the lines of “if someone took just one look at this, they’d be able to tell in seconds what’s wrong”.