A Resilient Quality Department: Time to Start Getting it Right

I’ve been waiting for four days for a package that the driver said was undeliverable while I was sitting there eating my breakfast. Today, I finally got a response from the supervisor, who said the driver claimed that my house did not exist. Perhaps I got the address wrong, she summarized.

In response, I sent four emails. One stated that my house existed, and if he thought there was only a gas station and not a home, then why not go back during business hours and leave it at the gas station? If there was confusion about my address, why did no one contact me or say so?

The delivery details page only claimed, “Driver will attempt redelivery.” Yet, in four days, he had not, and the gas station was open during regular business hours for every one of them.

For the second email, I was back at my desk. I sent a screenshot of my address on Google Earth, which placed the house number on the existing house.

Third, I asked her why she didn’t get her account on Google Earth, pass on what you learned about your customers to the next manager, or get technology to be your memory.

The fourth, I sarcastically thanked her for the apology, which was never offered. She only provided immediate defence of her driver’s actions, which was doing any investigation herself. Not a minute’s worth, for that’s how long it took me to ask Google where I lived. It took her longer to “ask the driver” if she did, and she wrote me an offensive email.

The universe has a sense of humour as I get my face all knotted up over the late delivery of anti-wrinkle patches.

A Perpetual Truth

I used to work in logistics. With the embarrassment over these constant wastes of resources, I couldn’t even last four years. I happily exited upon taking a stance to my boss, who bullied me from day one. All her direct reports sought me out like a life preserver from day one. They each told me their version of “Don’t poke the bear.”

I resisted for almost four years. And she was the Director of Quality, a director of something that never existed. But boy, it employed many people and had a massive budget for technology.

Quality was lost in the lack of ambition and honesty, all in the name of ego. It certainly wasn’t worth living for if you make money to support your life. No way, it simply wasn’t worth it. I heard of someone committing suicide there while at work, and it was imaginable.

This situation was rife in the name of Quality. At least it was confirmed within the small scope of my experience and exposure.

It is easy to do better. Yet everyone is protecting an ego, a salary, a reputation, or something other than the customer. It’s a two-faced thing in business because the only one whose number one job is the customer. For everyone else, it’s secondary, a mere attribute to their first function, be it marketing, human resources, or even sales.

A Captivating Vision

I’m captivated by Yellowstone and Taylor Sheridan’s stories of protection, swindling, and justice. They are both empowering and terrifying, yet they seem like the better version of humanity.

For me, I’m so sick of being robbed that there’s no way I could ever do it to someone. I’m sick of it being done to me. When I was robbed of my SUV in my driveway, I was glad I wasn’t a family of three looking for a place to live. I’d made hard decisions and endured terrible situations to ensure that I’d have choices if money were the one reliable path to choice.

I’ve worked many jobs that felt horrible. Earning as much as possible was a challenging way to achieve retirement. Captivated by the life I could live, I tried to go along with much I felt gut-wrenchingly terrible about—not my actions but the strategies around me.

For everyone, when it happens to you, you have one of two choices. One, never do that to anyone else. Two, you learn a new way to succeed over your peers, legal or not, and if not, how to get away with it.

A Slowness to Act

When I was young, I hid all my Halloween candy. I wanted it to last and had siblings who ate all of theirs within days. One night, my brother was caught eating my precious stash. I felt what you’d feel—horrified, violated, betrayed, and a sense of complete loss where once there was hope. My parents laughed, and that was that I was supposed to get over it. I was also supposed to laugh about it; wasn’t it cute? Maybe that’s the day I decided I hated kids.

My younger sister stole all my Canada savings bonds and my wallet and committed fraud at the bank that let her cash them in. I should have called the cops on her, but I called my dad.

My dad should have called the cops on her, but it was me doing it years later after she’d hit my face with a hairbrush one too many times when I was leaving in my car without her because it was my savings that paid for the vehicle, my warning and my agenda. And just like that, my homeroom teacher talked me into doing something. My younger sister went to jail, and it wasn’t only me charging her.

People don’t act early enough or entirely enough when given the opportunity. It was me when, on day one with that job in logistics, I realized I’d stepped into a dead-end trap, and I was coming out the worst for it, one way or another. It was my parents and their lax parenting that turned authoritarian far too late and never landed on nurturing.

Every quality department with every customer complaint makes the complaint go away while doing nothing material about it, including making it look like nothing material when management asks about it.

But what do you do when there’s nothing you can do? We recently went for a little ride to evaluate the extent of a repair job. Immediately, I noticed something off with my right foot, and later, on a break, I noticed that the toe hold was gone, and the bolts completely sheered off. When?

Thinking back, I landed on the twenty minutes it sat unattended at the marina. On Sunday, we’d gone a few kilometres onto the first lake when I smelled something horrible and felt a clunk, clu, clunk sound. I hit the brakes as fast as possible and informed my buddy of my situation’s wrongness, hoping the ice was thick where I was stopped.

After many mechanical minutes later, we went with my plan to ride it to the marina we’d just left behind. We were going to leave it in the parking lot, double back to the truck, and get it with the trailer. So, it took twenty minutes to double back and drive back with the trailer. I didn’t go on that trip, and if I had, would I have noticed there? The next time I rode it, there was no toe hold.

An Awareness of Priorities

The mechanic said he’d noticed the shorn-off bolts but didn’t think to follow up on them, as bodywork isn’t his number one problem; getting it running right was the priority.

When trying to order a new part, I was told it was back ordered, as were a few other things, and that it was going missing because all it took to get one was a 10-mil socket and an opportunity. With the trade war, the chance to get certain parts is dwindling.
It’s so upsetting to get robbed and not know who did it, to have nothing on which to seek justice. Where do you put that anger? Unfortunately, the answer for the world is that you put it in your pocket for the next deserving to get his share and the accumulated baggage.

In a world of shoddy products, soggy paycheques, and shorter tempers, why can’t we get Quality right? Imagine the impact one little well-funded department could make on the world.

Imagine if that department also existed in government. Wow, people and business might pay their taxes with delight instead of skirting the limits of the law and minimizing their taxes by any means necessary.

What a different world it could be if Quality existed or even the active pursuit of it. Instead of power, bullying, intimidation, or putting up with extremely low expectations, you need infinite influence.