Service delivery seems to have taken the backstage in most parts of the country. I arrive at a restaurant and it takes 15minutes for a waiter to attend to me or like I found out at a hotel the other day when there are too many guests, they tell you it will take 40minutes to get you hot water for tea. Merde!
Anyway I have tucked away a column to deal with hotels and another on service delivery. The column today will deal with conveniences as a service delivery issue. I am often gobsmacked when I go to a hospitality venue and find that their public conveniences are a mess or less than noble.
The state of public conveniences are so important that in dealing with international organisations, the first thing they tell you at the start of a workshop as part of the house rules is where the conveniences are, security checks and how to conduct oneself.
I have friends whose homes are a haven for me. I can literally live in their bathrooms. It is clean, stylish and arty. There are magazines, candles and home décor. There are books and nice smelling towels and heavenly aromas. Great stuff!
Once I visited a well-known hospitality venue in Abuja and found that the female conveniences had lost all the door knobs and handles. In other words the doors to where you need to be private could not be closed. Some even had gaping holes where the door knobs previously were.
I was as angry as I was ashamed. I was also astonished. There were expatriate guests at this venue and I shuddered to think what their opinion will be if they ventured to use the conveniences. I was also surprised to find a woman in the altogether changing from one outfit to the other, all in the open. While the toilets were in cubicles, the open spaces were where the wash hand basins and mirrors were. There she stood bras and all gaily changing in the open. My first instinct was to retreat and run for cover. She stood there unperturbed singing an off key song. I tiptoed past her and went to the convenience whose door handle as I have earlier intimated was broken and had fallen off. I felt invaded. I did my business with a lump in my throat. I wondered if I was going to be attacked by this woman whose muscles indicated that should she indeed charge at me, I would not stand a chance. She was big and burly and was not a sight for sore eyes. Her size was not my immediate issue; her display of private matters in a public place was my greatest concern.
Later on at this hospitality venue while having a drink leisurely with friends and family, madam kiliwi strode past me, to my utter chagrin. Dressed in her tracksuits she had the insignia of the hospitality industry on her jacket. Wow! This was a staff all naked at a convenience. I asked myself the one question “was she trying to frighten guests?” I then reported the matter of madam kiliwi and the broken door handles to a management staff of the hospitality venue. They apologised and promised to correct it. Two weeks later, I visited. The door knobs were still missing. Madam kiliwi was still strutting. I could not find anyone to ask if Madam Kiliwi was still stripping at their conveniences. Clearly nothing had changed. As a people we must remember that conveniences are no longer in bushes or dug pits as it used to be in the past. We seem to carry our primordial instincts to public conveniences and mess it up for the person coming after. There are no directional signs and we have to keep asking for where conveniences are wherever we go. Pity!
There are modern ways of proving and maintaining conveniences. I have found to my utter consternation that some institutions and offices do not understand the importance of conveniences as a service delivery issue.
I have been to several institutions, government and non-governmental, where the cleaning and maintenance of their conveniences is not taken seriously. This result in a weird smell in corridors, in some instances you need to hold your breath to walk past. In other places there are leakages and water is everywhere.
Why should the leader or CEO of such organisation not care that their corridors chase away their clients or their conveniences are permanently wet and inconveniencing? Customer care involves the comfort of staff and clients. The state of your convenience determines who you are. Sometimes even the shanks are broken, the toilet seats are ugly, toiletries are not provided and water is not running. Help!
Are we interested? We should be. That is where the most important assessment of your organisation begins. In other parts of the world they can deny you a job or a contract with one visit to your convenience.
Enough said!
By: Eugenia Abu
