Getting it right
It can be stressful dealing with government officials and their agents. There is something that you need, driving licence, register for health care, tax and benefit questions and even coming back into the country in the first place.
I don’t need a report to tell me that something is amiss, and I reckon that it must be a top down training and supervision issue. I’ve seen and experienced issues at airports, registries and more.
On a recent internal flight in the UK. I went through security wearing an all plastic belt. Security staff asked me to remove it. I explained that if I did my pants would fall down. They decided that undoing it would suffice. I went through the metal detector. All clear. Then a security guy checked my belt because, he said, that I might have knife blades concealed within it. Wow, wouldn’t that have set the metal detector off? I shook my head and let him get on with it.
I’m a stickler for paperwork and forms. I check the regulations and get it right. I kind of expect that frontline customs agents would be just as and even more knowledgeable. Arriving back in Canada, without even looking at my 100 per cent right paperwork, let alone understanding it, some agents decided that everything was wrong and referred me on and on until I got to a nice lady who did know and stamped me through with a welcoming smile. My point here being that the frontline agents are either not ready to be out there or badly trained. If you don’t know how to proceed with a set of circumstances, find out.
I’ve come across issues personally and known a lot of other people that have had difficulties with registries. In particular, with registries not being able to identify a document and its legal significance and worse not being able to read and interpret it properly. This has resulted in stress and frustration and a bit of a lottery as to whether the person serving you is up to speed or knows where to look. Everyone should be up to speed.
It gets worse. A recent examination by Canada’s auditor general on Canada Revenue’s (CRA) call centres makes pretty poor reading. Agents answered around one out of three calls and incorrect information was being given 30 per cent of the time on general tax questions. Getting wrong information to apply to one’s taxes could have repurcussions. The auditor general also found that of the over 53 million calls that the CRA got around 29 million were blocked because the call centres couldn’t handle the volume.
Sadly, there are not new issues, but it is not rocket science to fix.