Sentenced to a life in prism
Sentenced to life in prism
The world through four eyes
I’ve been a contact lenses wearer for about 35 years now. Practically a lifetime of living with little discs of silicone hydrogel attached to my eyeballs. Needless to say, they’ve been life-changing and have allowed me to do all sorts of things that I couldn’t do when I wore glasses – like getting my first girlfriend when I was 15. You see I grew up in an era when glasses weren’t cool, especially when they looked like this:
As you can see they took up at least 1/3 of my tiny, teenage face. Given that my eyesight sits at minus 6.5, the glass had to be relatively thick and heavy, so much so that I had to wear bigger shoes to counterbalance the earths gravitational pull, which was determined to drag my face into the ground.
For those readers who have 2020 vision (nothing to do with the year of the great plague), to experience minus 6.5 vision you have to rub Vaseline into your eyeballs, drink a bottle of gin and open your eyes underwater. I always fancied a nickname at school. Something like “stud” or “killer” but these amazing eyeglasses earned me the moniker “goggles”. I realise now why they are called spectacles, as that is indeed what I was.
A future so bright
My mom (rest her soul) thought it’d be useful if the lenses darkened in the daylight. Having emigrated from Newcastle Upon Tyne in the UK some years before, sunlight was somewhat of a novelty to be both embraced and feared. This little piece of optometric wizardry did wonders as the sunglass effect only made my optical aids more pronounced. You can see that polarizing effect in the photo above. This had the impact of making me look a bit like Puck from Maya the Bee (a popular kids tv show in the eighties). Also good for girlfriend acquisition.
Meet the optometrist
You may be wondering where this is going? The contact lenses (this time a genuinely great suggestion from my mom) not only saved me from a life of celibacy but also helped me establish a lifelong relationship with the optometric industry. I viewed these professionals as ocular messiahs, capable of raising even the most awkward of individuals out of social death.
Earlier this week I decided to change optometrists. My old one was pretty good but I felt that having just turned 50, a fresh pair of eyes was needed, so to speak. It had been a while since I had the full barrage of tests and assessments, and I was amazed at how much technology filled the small consulting room. I was pleased with this and looked forward to not having any of the antiquated, uncomfortable periscope equipment wrapped around my head whilst I pretended to be able to see the letters on the wall. Isn’t it strange how when one is faced with an eye test, one feels an incredible urge to squint, strain and wildly guess at the letters to pass the test even if it comes at the expense of landing up with the wrong prescription.
A life sentence
In my case I think this stemmed back to that fateful day at school in Grade 4 when the government appointed optometrist came around and tested everyone’s eyesight. It was of course that pivotal test failure that led to the commencement of Puck Goggles Colman’s six-year prism sentence (see what I did there?).
Unfortunately, despite the tech-packed lab in my new optometrists office, I still landed up with the steampunk equipment on my face. It appears that this remains the go-to for eye specialists, which seems odd especially given that my current practitioner looked decidedly millennial. I guess I was hoping for some science-laden beam of light that would shine through my eyes and immediately figure out what I needed to live a normal life. One without eventually having to train our French Bulldogs as guides. If you own one of these hounds you will also know that they are lovable, snoring, fart-bombers with terrible eyesight of their own. All three of us would be dead at the first traffic light.
Spot the difference
I tolerated the uncomfortable Mad Max binoculars for what seemed like hours whilst we both played a game of spot the difference. If you’ve been for a professional eye test recently (not one at the licensing department of despair) then you too will have played the game. You are presented, one-at-a-time, with approximately three million lenses all mysteriously, repetitively numbered from 1 to 6 and must spot the undetectable differences between them. Failure to do this means your prescription will be wrong and you’ll spend thousands on the wrong spectacles or contact lenses. This I believe is what happened to me the last time I got my eyes tested. Rather than admit that I flubbed the expensive game, I ended up wearing a prescription for years that I’m sure was perfect… for someone else.
The outcome of this week’s game was somewhat fruitful. I have been told that I need multifocal lenses given my advanced age of 50. Yes, contact lenses do come in a multifocal version although the costs are decidedly eye-watering. I’ll be experimenting with these in the hope that I gain twenty-twenty in 2022.
See you soon. I’m the LiabilityGuy.
Stand and Deliver
Stand and deliver
The true cost of fast food delivery services
Before I begin let me start by saying:
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- I’m a huge fan of technology and an even bigger fan of the companies that are driving Industrial Revolution 4.0.
- I intended initially to look only into UberEats, as that’s the service I’ve used most frequently but after commencing with my research I felt it only fair to compare the prices with Mr D (aka “Mr Delivery” to those of you older than 25).
- I don’t begrudge any company making a profit for great service delivery through technology but I am a strong proponent of transparency. Digital transformation gives businesses a great ability to be open with their customers.
- I work in the insurance industry in South Africa which is heavily regulated with a major focus on Treating Customers Fairly (TCF). This has shaped my thinking about transparency, service delivery and disclosure of information to consumers.
Uber changed our lives
Uber conducts business in a way where one can only marvel at the digital transformation driven into the taxi industry. Uber’s ride hailing app is easy to use, safe, reliable and works in just about every major city in South Africa and indeed, across the globe. My wife and I both commute between Johannesburg and Cape Town almost every week and without Uber, our lives would have been much more complicated and expensive. Another factor in Uber’s favour is the cost. It’s generally cheaper to take an Uber than to take a metered taxi as was revealed in the BusinessTech report published in 2017.
The fastest food…
I’ve literally taken hundreds of trips every year with Uber since they started trading in SA. Off the back of this long-standing relationship, when UberEats launched in SA in September 2016, I was very keen to give them a whirl. The whole model just made a lot of sense, using the drivers who weren’t too busy to do deliveries of fast food and using the kick-ass Uber technology to facilitate the transaction. What a win! Admittedly I was a little slow out of the starting blocks and the first time I used the app was actually not in SA but in Paris. Christelle and I had just finished the Paris Marathon and our need for carbo-bomb-infused junk food trumped our ability to walk the streets to seek it out. I downloaded the app and had ordered pizza and drinks within just a few seconds. The user experience was very smooth, much like I expected from Uber. And so my trusting relationship with Uber continued.
For me, when using any sort of delivery or courier service there are only two factors that are important; cost and delivery time. I already knew that Uber have an awesome track record on the time element so the remaining factor was that of the cost. As soon as you are ready to order through the app you are told what the cost of the delivery will be. This may vary depending on the distance but given that the app only displays restaurants that are close by, the cost is around R10,00. That is for most people, a very reasonable delivery charge. On the surface, UberEats deliver a great service at a very low delivery cost. In my blended family there are six of us and we are privileged enough to have more than one Uber account between us. This means that controlling the expenses each month is paramount and everyone has to make sure they don’t blow the collective budget. It was in this monitoring of costs that I started to notice something strange when using the app.
So is it more expensive?
My daughter recently took a part-time job in a restaurant. I had ordered food via UberEats from that particular restaurant recently and I commented on how expensive the meal was. She looked puzzled as she took a copy of the menu out of her purse. The cost of the very same meal was around 25% higher in the Uber Eats app. I have since discovered that some of the food prices on the app are between 20% and 30% higher than they are in the restaurants themselves. This is however not consistent amongst the various eateries. I conducted research on Colcacchio, Nandos, Steers and Simply Asia as they are all in the area closest to me. The results appear below. In summary, two of the four brands charge the same on the delivery apps as they do in their restaurants.
Delivery was “free” from Mr D.
But who is controlling the prices?
According to an article in Forbes Magazine entitled “Why Uber Eats will eat you into bankruptcy” the restaurants pay about 30% to have their products listed in the app. Interestingly the article goes on to say that Uber doesn’t allow restaurants to up their prices to cover this.
Uber Eats charges a restaurant 30% of their listed prices for the privilege of delivering their food. For example, Bob’s Deli charges $10 for a burger. Uber Eats would take $3 dollars as a fee for delivering their food. Also, Uber Eats does not permit restaurants to increase their prices to “cover” Uber’s cost.
Cameron Keng (Forbes 26 March 2018)
This does not appear to be the case in SA as is evident from the examples above. In fact in SA, it appears that the restaurants have discretion as to how these platform fees will be levied. Remember this isn’t just about UberEats, Mr D charges the same prices. That would indicate that the prices are indeed being set by the restaurants and not by the service providers.
I confirmed this with UberEats, using their chat facility:
Is there a duty to disclose the other fees and charges?
I met with a friend who is a consumer lawyer in the food industry to discuss whether or not there is a duty to disclose these hidden charges to the public. The Consumer Protection Act in SA is the primary piece of legislation that governs the relationship between businesses and consumers. Section 27 of the Act deals with Intermediaries. This section would appear to apply to the food delivery services in question. There are a number of regulations (Regulation 9) pertaining to the information that must be disclosed by an intermediary. Of particular interest are these two points:
“An intermediary must in the manner and form of delivery agreed to with the consumer –
(i) disclose any information, at any relevant time, which may be relevant to the consumer when deciding whether to acquire the service rendered by the intermediary, or whether to continue with an existing service;
(j) disclose commission, consideration fees, charges or brokerages payable to the intermediary by any other person;”
Are these other charges disclosed?
The short answer is no, they aren’t. In fact the part of this exercise that is particularly concerning to me as a consumer is that there is a delivery charge that is disclosed when you check out and pay in the apps. This led me to believe that that was the only charge being levied.
If you had ordered three gourmet pizza’s from Col’cacchio using Uber or Mr D, you would have in fact paid just over R100 on a R500 bill for delivery.
I posted something on social media last week when I started looking into this to gauge the response from consumers. A few things became evident from the responses:
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- Most people did not appear to know about any other charges being levied other than the “delivery fees”. They were not happy with this. If the delivery fee itself was not mentioned, people probably wouldn’t have minded the loading
- Some people (particularly those in the tech industry) did not see anything wrong with the service providers charging an additional fee for the delivery although many agreed that more disclosure would have been better. Tech lends itself to greater disclosure in fact
- Some responses indicated that Uber and Mr D were entitled to charge whatever they like and were not obliged to disclose their fees any more than the local retailer has to disclose their cost of sales to customers. The difference is that the platforms are intermediaries and not retailers or manufacturers – they do not buy the stock and resell it.
- Some comments simply reflected the view that, if you don’t like the prices on the platforms, get off your ass and go to the restaurant. That is true, but if you don’t know the pricing difference how can you decide whether to move your ass off the couch?
So what’s the verdict?
As consumers we can decide who gets our hard earned cash based on whether the convenience and efficiency of a service provider justifies the additional expense. Of course one would need to have all the facts to be able to make an informed decision. On the current basis, the customer has to first Google the restaurant and then compare the price on the app.
There is no consistency as to how the hidden charges are levied so the consumer never knows which prices have been inflated to cover the platform costs.
Is the service provided by UberEats or Mr D worth the extra charge? In my opinion it probably is but then why not simply advise the consumer during the ordering process that the prices for specific restaurants have been inflated? I think most of us agree that a delivery charge of R10,00 to R15,00 isn’t sufficient to cover actual delivery costs. To charge a heavy delivery fee on 3 items going to the same address also does not sit right with me personally. Technology allows for much greater interaction with customers, creating several touch points where critical information can be shared. That surely creates a more sustainable business model. Or do we have to wait for the disruptors to be disrupted first?
To charge a heavy delivery fee on 3 items going to the same address does not sit right…
TAKE THE POLL…
I’m the LiabilityGuy please feel free to comment or share your thoughts on this issue.
Driving blindfolded
Driving Blindfolded
and other mysteries of the mind
Are you a nervous passenger? Would you drive with someone who clearly couldn’t see the road ahead? I have two children who have been driving for a short time so I have learned to steel myself against automotive anxiety without gouging my fingers into the dashboard. Yesterday, however, I was pushed to new limits. My good friend, Larry Soffer, is a mentalist and he wanted to drive his new BMW…blindfolded.
I’ve been mates with Larry for a while now. My wife, Christelle, introduced us at a corporate event she was hosting almost seven years ago. She figured we’d probably have a lot to chat about because he’s a performer of mentalism and I’m an underwriter. Now on the surface that may seem like a complete paradox of job specs but actually insurance folk and mentalists are very similar. We both make money out of predicting the future, or at least thats what we try to do. Larry is just better at it than most.
The reason she brought us together really had nothing to do with insurance. You see I’ve been an amateur mentalist for about 20 years. Yes, that’s a long time to be an amateur at anything but the reality is that at some point in life, hard choices have to be made – you have to ask if are you going to amaze people with your unbelievable intellect and profound abilities, causing women to swoon and men to puff out their chests defensively, as you enter the room, or are you going to be a mentalist. Yes insurance is all of those things but this blog isn’t actually about the world of risk management, it’s pretty much about the opposite.
With my lovely wife out of town, you’d think I’d be out drinking with the boys at Mavericks in Cape Town but that’s not how we practitioners of psychic prestidigitation roll. Larry came over to help me with my metal bending abilities and in return I said I’d take a drive as a passenger in his new car while he practiced driving without being able to see – just a very ordinary Saturday afternoon you might think?
Bending spoons was made famous by an Israeli fellow called Uri Geller in the 1970’s when the whole world was a bit mental. He’d been stopping clocks with his mind and bending forks and keys for years. Branded as a true psychic, then a charlatan and finally as a brilliant entertainer, the guy really led an interesting life. I recommend you read up on him if you don’t know who he is.
I’d been messing about with metal bending for a while in my teens although it was only when I met up with Larry that I saw the real entertainment factor in it. So after spending the day spooning with Larry (????), we decided to try something a little more challenging, even dangerous. I’d heard of psychic performers doing a blindfold drive before but I’ve never actually seen it done. The technique basically works on the remote-viewing premise. Remote-viewing was conceptualised in a US government experiment in the 1990’s, known as the Stargate Project and involved using psychics to see things from great distances, or as would be the case in our adventure, to see through the eyes of another. I can’t do remote-viewing but I can see you shaking your head right now – has the LiabilityGuy lost his mind? I can’t tell you to believe any of this stuff, just think of it as entertainment if that’s most acceptable to you. What I can tell you is that I took a trip in a car, with a blindfolded driver and after giving him a few prompts at the outset, he drove the car as if he had 20/20 vision. I won’t lie, I was terrified but it really is remarkable.
Larry will be performing this live at the Killarney racetrack, at higher speed on the 22nd of September 2018 in Cape Town. Check it out.
The most disgusting thing you’ll ever eat
The most disgusting thing
You’ll never eat
When I travel to a foreign country, I like to sample the local dishes but whilst we were in Paris and Rome earlier this month, something happened to me that made me question my adventurous nature and the way in which Google and Wikipedia conspire against unsuspecting travellers. This blog was written the night after this life-changing event…
“Last night Christelle and I visited this quaint little bistro outside our apartment in Paris. To put things in context, we’d spent the entire morning in transit from Rome, then walked about 16km exploring the city, as one does when one is living in an actual postcard world. Earlier that day, at lunch time in fact, we had this incredible vegan meal (I see you raise an eyebrow, vegan? LiabilityGuy? Never). But yes, I actually ate a vegan burger from this place called Hanks and it was so good. I’ll definitely have another if given the opportunity.
But I have to say that being raised in South Africa and not having consumed meat with my mid day meal, left me feeling, well lets just say a little unpatriotic. So last night we stopped in at the bistro down the road from our apartment. I was pretty hungry and didn’t fancy the usual array of French nouvelle cuisine. That’s when this dish caught my eye; a local delicacy called andouillette. It’s pronounced Andoo-yett apparently. I spotted it on the menu and did a quick wiki search. I didn’t open the full wiki page on my phone so this is what I saw:
“Andouillette is a coarse-grained sausage made with pork, intestines or chitterlings, pepper, wine, onions, and seasonings.” Admittedly I should’ve been a bit grossed out by the intestines bit, and I had no idea what chitterlings are but they sounded cute. I also thought “aren’t all sausages encased in some sort of intestines?” So I ordered this traditional sausage.
Christelle and I engaged in some holiday chatter while we waited. We’d really been having the best time and not a single bad meal. Until now.
Let’s just say the sausage announced its arrival by a peculiar aroma not dissimilar to that of a dead, rancid wild boar’s butthole. Not that I’ve been that close to a pigs ass, except this one time when I visited parliament on a school tour but that’s a story for another time.
In any event this freaking sausage arrives with string on both ends. You know to hold all the goodies in. And by goodies I mean intestinal stuff and get this, it’s actually the colon. No not the punctuation mark, the part of a creature that processes actual crap. The smell emanating from this dish was so disturbing I was transported back to my school days and was reminded of how when your mom had packed you an egg sandwich, you felt obliged to tell everyone that you had an egg sandwich so they didn’t think you farted when you opened it. I almost apologised on the spot to everyone in the restaurant in the hope that they didn’t mistakenly think I’d had shit my own pants. My inability to articulate this in French, held me back. As well as a strong gag reflex.
So I’m sitting at a tiny French table with my vegan wife and this 12 inch smelly sausage. (I’ll let you think about that image for a bit before I move on). Ok?
Being a die hard Anglo Saxon warrior there was no way I was not going to eat this thing. At 18 euros it had an appeal that almost surpassed my desire to throw it out the window and alert the authorities. Almost. Fortunately the pungent porky also came with chips and some lettuce with a weird dressing so I figured I’d be able to mask the flavor if it was as bad as the scent.
If you’re a human being you’ll know that much of what you taste is processed through your nasal passages, this being one of the reasons why you can’t taste your food when you have a blocked nose. As I dissected the beastly banger, the smell seemed stronger. And it was at this point that I noticed my wife holding her nose. I digress here to remind you, the reader of this tale of gastronomical woe, of the fact that my wife is a vegan. Her sensitivity to strange carnivorian scent cannot be over emphasised. I should also mention that the size of the average table in a Parisian bistro is just slightly larger than a postage stamp. She could not have gotten closer to this meal even if she had ordered it herself.
The smell definitely appeared to be getting worse as I cut into it. I contemplated sticking some fries up my nose to conclude my meal without gagging but instead opted to eat them the traditional way, hoping to use the dish they came in to cover the sausage, blocking some of the putrid aroma.
Fortunately this was not necessary as the waitress appeared and I indicated for her to remove the leftovers (1/2 of the sausage). We paid and left the restaurant. On the way home whilst being subjected to ridicule and disgust by my wife, I went back into Wikipedia and read the entire post which goes onto say, “True andouillette is rarely seen outside France and has a strong, distinctive odour related to its intestinal origins and components. Although sometimes repellent to the uninitiated, this aspect of andouillette is prized by its devotees.”
I’m the Liability Guy and I have just two pieces of advice:
1. If something tastes and smells like crap, it is quite possibly crap. Don’t eat it. Or you may die with actual crap in your mouth.
2. Wikipedia is not the lazy reader’s friend. If you don’t open the whole page you may land up in shit (or shit may land up in you).”
Setting your Out-of-Office message
Setting your out-of-office
without being a douche
I bet you’re one of those lucky people. You’ve never been this organised. You’ve probably run through the checklist, making big swishy ticks like an eager driving test invigilator whose palm just got greased.
- Leave applied for a month ago (and approved) – check
- holiday booked – check
- desk relatively clear – check
- email inbox up to date – well as much one can be up to date. It’s a bit like trying to stop running water with a sieve.
- Out of office message engaged – ah…
I’m only going on leave next week and I still have a bit of time to formulate the perfect “out-of-office” message. Is there such a thing as a perfect out-of-office mail you may ask? The answer to this age-old corporate conundrum, is in this masterpiece of literary genius you are already reading. Ok I’m not sure if the question is actually age-old but the literary genius bit is definitely true.
Perhaps a good starting point here is to explain the Out-of-Office facility, just in case you live in the Outer Hebrides and have never owned an email address. In fact if you live in the Outer Hebrides you probably won’t be reading this on a phone or computer, more likely then you are reading this in hardcopy as a tattered, yellowing, piece of parchment with a treasure map on the other side which you extracted from a dirty beer bottle floating past the island you’ve been marooned upon. If that is the case, read no further, turn overleaf and start digging.
The Out-of-Office (OOO) message was invented by Microsoft in the 80’s although rumour has it, it was called the OOF back then. Mysteriously no one knows what the “F” stands for although anyone who has returned to the office after a month off, is likely to have determined their own definition for the “F”. Perhaps it should be renamed the WTF message once you turn it off after your vacation?
I think we can all agree that it’s actually Bill Gates’s fault that most of us suffer under the tyranny of an inbox throughout the year so I guess in a moment of extreme guilt he thought it’d be a good idea to create an automatic message that helped remind your customers and colleagues that you actually don’t give an “F” about them. It’s an amazing tool that allows you to delegate and irritate two different sets of people at the same time (your co-workers and your customers).
I’ve always felt that the OOO or OOF was a cruel automated gloating system. You’re wading through a quagmire of mail, looking for some way of moving your own pile of electronic despair to someone else’s. You’re lulled into a false sense of security and achievement as you press the send button. Then, almost as if you fired a boomerang shaped missile into cyber space, it bounces right back into your digital mailbox.
“Hi there, I’m sorry but I’m out of the office at the moment. I’ll return in 3 weeks. If your mail is urgent, please forward it to (insert name of hapless colleague). If not, I’ll attend to it when I return. Have a great day. Regards.”
There are hidden meanings in this email that may be invisible to the average email slave. Let me help you decipher this. Think of me as the enigma machine LiabilityGuy. The true message appears with the hidden meanings in red below:
“Hi there, I’m sorry but I’m out of the office at the moment. Hey asshole. I have no idea who you are, hence the reason for this impersonal, automated salutation masked as a friendly greeting. I’ll return in 3 weeks. Note that I’m not openly telling you I’m on holiday but unless people take lunch for 3 weeks at a time in your company, you can assume that I’ve probably saved up all my leave for this extremely long holiday. I’m gloating at the fact that you, mere mortal, used up most of your leave with a day here and there during the year, and now you have to work and read this, the electronic equivalent of being “flipped the bird” in the traffic. If your mail is urgent this is important because if you are like 90% of the contacts in this mailbox you’ll email me for any old random shit that you could probably resolve on your own within a few hours, let alone weeks, please forward it to (insert name of hapless colleague) As a bit of a joke, I’ve forwarded my mail to a colleague that has absolutely no idea what I’ve been working on for the past few months. This means that you’ll spend 3 weeks trying to explain yourself by which time I’ll be back at work dealing with this in person. If not, I’ll attend to it when I return. See previous comment and note the clever way all choices have a single outcome Have a great day. Regards. As I’m typing this glorious message I am laughing loudly. Not just any laugh but a deep, taunting, gloating, belly laugh at the fact that by the time you read it, I’ll be tanning my cheeks somewhere exotic (which means anywhere but in the office where you need me)“
I realise we all need a break and that the OOO is probably the best way to make sure people know you won’t be attending to their mail within the usual 5 seconds of receiving it. You know those people that email you and then call immediately afterwards to make sure you received it. That call is important because in spite of major technological advances in digital communication, these individuals assume email is as reliable as the homing pigeon or the stagecoach postal service. Bandits lurk behind every data boulder, ready to jump out screaming “Stand and deliver”. Hands up if you thought of Adam Ant a second ago (if you don’t know who that is, go and ask your mom).
Seriously though, if you think about it, the Out of Office message could use a bit of an overhaul. I’ve compiled a list of do’s and don’ts :
- Don’t forget to update the message to cater for the current period you’ll be away. Nothing worse than receiving an out of office message from someone that suggests they’ll be back from leave, 6 months ago. Really, do you own a time machine and you’re actually going to come back before you leave?
- Don’t forget to change the content of the message to keep it current. Ladies, if you were on maternity leave 3 years ago, your clients and colleagues do not want to be reminded of this historical fact every December. This is not Facebook moments…
- Do tell your colleagues if you are forwarding mail or redirecting senders. Most people receive way too much mail already. Adding another mailbox to one person’s load unexpectedly is evil. Dante would’ve allocated a 10th circle of hell to this, entitled Inbox Inferno if he lived in the 21st century. I’m not sure if one can prepare for an email avalanche any more than one can prepare to be shot in the face but I guess its just common courtesy.
- Do explore the latest Microsoft advancements in the “Auto Reply” video. There are some good tips that will help you avoid upsetting clients and colleagues.
Above all, remember that unless you manage your Out-of-Office effectively, you are really turning the company’s problem (of you being away) into the sender’s problem. Not a sustainable solution.
I’m the LiabilityGuy and I’m out of the office…