The CEO’s Ticket

If Corporate Politics and Mismanagement were an Olympic sport, I guess this incident would probably take the Gold this year.

Some CEO’s stupid e-ticket inadvertently got voided when it was not supposed to and needed to be re-issued manually. Now, things like this happen all the time due to system glitches (this is the part where the guy at the check-in counter gives you a blank look and tells you have to wait for a while because of some ‘computer error’), but anyway, stuff like this happen all the time in a normal working day, to normal folks worldwide.

Unfortunately for us, this time, it had to be a CEO.
As usual, the half the management jumped us and drove us crazy to resolve the issue, but then I wonder:

Do CEOs stand in line at those obnoxious check-in queues and get told, “Sorry mac, but your ticket’s no good” like the rest of us?
What do they do then; call up the office and ask to waitlisted on the next available plane…and then sit at a waiting lounge for their name to be called?
Do they then call up their other CEO buddies and play online Monopoly or something?

Its all good for the imagination, but I’m willing to bet none of the above happened and Mr. CEO probably didn’t even have an idea that something was wrong with his ticket. If anything, he was probably just informed of a ‘small mishap on the system’.

Which means my entire week-long data analysis of what exactly happened to his ticket and the technical reasons for the untimely void, is worth nothing.

The max that can happen is that it ends up as a report on his desk, waiting to be tossed in the trash along with yesterday’s newspaper when Mr. CEO comes back from his trip!

TouchType

This may not be a topic that’s discussed all that often but, even though almost everyone I know spends a good part of their day looking at a computer; not many people I know can touch-type.

Doing a random you-don’t-know-I’m-doing-this-survey at work the other day, I found most of my colleagues – all of them skilled programmers – hopelessly poking at the keyboard with their forefingers while concentrating on what they are writing. Some of the more experienced people used up to two fingers per hand but that was it.
In fact, the only people I really did see touch-type (at a remarkable speed too, I must add) were the secretaries.

I don’t know why this really bothers me enough to do a post on it, but it kind of reflects on the skill-set we take pride in not having. I mean, even though we no longer concerned about handwriting (I mean, the only times I seem to hold a pen anymore are only to sign something), in a world where the only difference between someone crossing their “f”s and dotting their “i”s depends on the font used, the least we can do is take a little more concern in how we run our fingers on the one surface that’s become the standard means of getting the message across…from Email to fax, printed letters, IMs, social networking and of course, blogging!