Dear Editor,
Reference is made to the November 3rd edition of the Stabroek Weekend section – page 11a.
There is a picture, of one Ms. Gina Severin. I was passing the page when I paused. It was there 1,000-watt smile. Ear to ear. Eyes aglow even through the black and white frame. Her apparel seems to leap with cheer for the moment. Arresting. It was arresting for me, who appreciates these little things, which are neither meagre nor meaningless. I can’t recall in the several years of my return when I have seen the equivalent in a business setting, bar none.
The moment was caught of Ms. Severin, Republic Bank Country Manager -Dominica chatting with an unidentified customer on opening day over there in the islands. I thought I would get away from the hurly-burly, the tempests that rage with slings and arrows of elections, ID cards, who plannin’ fuh cheet hoo, and who layed the lovely groundwork to perpetuate countless electoral perversities. What a warming set of people we are. Embraceable, too.
So when I came across Ms. Severin, I did something a little different. I stopped and looked and looked again, and so many thoughts came with a rush. Despite my hard years, I can still summon the interest to be touched by what are the positives in this life, the things that we can use so desperately, so urgently here.
I would like to hear a smile though the telephone line when I call the GPL, the GTT, and other government agencies. I am sensible enough to detect it. I am still hoping for it, even when the information may not be what I wish to hear. Whatever Ms. Severin was saying to that customer, it had to be suffused with warmth, through the lilt in her voice, the welcome in her comportment. I want to do business with that kind of people, actually meet them in government agencies and private enterprise. Can we have that here, please? Some of it? I will settle for even a little of it. Would be nice for our customer facing agents-no matter how bad their day, how poor their management, how limited their training-to be able to reach deep and display such effervescence before each member of the Guyanese public, who come before them. I think a sterling customer service mantra could be patterned after a line from one of those profound, deeply moving prayers of St Ignatius of Loyola: may everyone be better for having come into contact with me this day.
Too often what is heard, seen, observed, and experienced is the grumpy, the barely audible, the sketchy, the guarded, the discomforting, and the downright abusive and unacceptable. It is as if those employed are paid by the word: the less said, the more is the compensation; the more hostile the reception, the greater the internal embrace. There is cultural delight in these barbarisms; executive and managerial pride in the output of subordinates; and institutional comfort in leaving things just the way they have always been, and now immovably are.
Call me old school, and just another anachronism. Trouble is, I accept those appellations. For they mean that my people taught me well, and that I was a good student, who practice them well, and live them better. It is called breeding. Where are our political leaders, who know of such standards? Where are our political people, with whom I would have the greatest of difficulty from being in the same space with them. What can be said of their breeding? That is the level of my detestation of the standards they have set, the values they represent. That is what has taken firm hold – the tautest of strangling grips – around the neck of this society. Its youth. Its educated and veterans, too. And if the neck was all, then I would have walked away not so disgusted. But I cannot do so, when the minds of so many have been corrupted, beyond remediation I believe.
The regime of training antidotes is too superficial, too effortlessly rebuffed. A senior police trainer lamented that “we train them for months, and we hear: ‘Yessir! No sir!’ and less than two weeks later, most of those same once-disciplined products are unrecognizable in language, attitude, and professional ethics.
I am thankful of the Lady Severins of the world. They make my day, and not in the manner of Dirty Harry. There are too many Dirty Harry(s) around here. There are too few professional persons like Ms. Severin. Too far away. Too scarce even in the wombs of worship. What a country! What a graceless people we have become!
We have lost the ability to smile here. It is why we cry and curse so much. Why we cringe at how we have become. Those who are brave enough (and honest enough) should spare a moment and take a look at that picture on page 11a.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
