NU Paper by Cookie Monster on traffic education and enforcement

NU Paper: COOKIE MONSTER, MBAH Section 10B

What Pisses Me Off on the Road

I've been driving for more than twenty years, and I've seen the evolution of traffic in Metro Manila and its suburbs from being a mild discomfort in your trip from point A to point B back in the early 90s, to what has become a herculean struggle to keep your wits about you as endure every square kilometer of roadway in any of Manila's major streets today. I live in Cavite, spending at least three hours on the road every working day to get to and from the office. I suffer both from city as well as highway driving, and the daily routine would not be complete if road rage does not strike me at some point in the 100- or so kilometer dash from home to office and back. 

In recent years, my biggest source of aggravation on the road has been the motorcycle rider. Any decent, law-abiding and even barely sane driver would not weave in and out of lanes and cut you off as if they are riding roller blades instead of a motorized vehicle. But that is what 99% of motorcycle riders do, and you try honking your horn at them, and you'd be the recipient of a deathly glare from a special breed of arrogant and stupid fool on wheels. It's a pity that the motorcycle lane has only been tried in very few major thoroughfares – with disappointing results – because I would love to have the slightest reason to force them off my lane and into the gutter. Along stretches of highways with more than one lane, I reserve the choicest blast of electronic expletive from my horn to those who clog the inner lane and thus force you to overtake from the outer lane where slow moving vehicles should be in the first place. It is truly a miracle of divine grace that I've been in only a couple of traffic altercations with these splendid soldiers of anarchy on the road.

A very close second on the list of my usual cast of adversaries on the road are tricycle drivers, again because of their intractable refusal to stay off major streets and keep to the slow lane of our roadways. A long-standing national directive issued eons ago effectively bans these three-wheeled contraptions from national highways and major roads, but nobody from the LTFRB and the LGUs have had the balls to actually enforce this rule. Whether in Commonwealth Avenue or the Aguinaldo Highway, tricycles represent a major road hazard for motorists on this side of planet.

This brings me to the third item on this list, a spot reserved for drivers who have only a dinosaur's idea of what lane discipline is all about. It is not only about staying in the proper lane if you're doing 40 kilometers per hour on a three-lane stretch of road, but also using your turn signals to change lanes and doing so in the most defensive driving mode as possible, instead of cutting other drivers off as if you're jostling for pole position in the Daytona racetrack. Worse, the Filipino driver's concept of horror vacui makes him the most dangerous – and annoying – of all motorists in the world, treating any empty space on the road, regardless if its two or more lanes across, as his rightful space in the Filipino's scheme of drivers' privileges on the road. Try getting a bird's eye view of EDSA and look at where traffic is tied up, and you'd inevitably come upon a horde of buses jamming three out of four lanes trying to pick up passengers, literally piled like pick-up sticks across the busiest of Manila's thoroughfares.

Before I go further down this list, I got to mention here the nincompoops driving without lights – any light – at night, as well as those on high beams on busy AND well-lighted streets. If I ever get to drive a tank anywhere in the country at night, I would simply force the first group off the road by running over them, and happily fire away mortar rounds at the offending lights of the other group.

I haven't gotten around to talking about public utility jeepneys, or pedestrians using the roadway as extended sidewalks. Overall, in my mind, much of the aggravation can be addressed by better enforcement of the law, starting with the way our agencies allow individuals to drive by giving them licenses, to the way we design our roadways and encourage discipline and proper driving protocols on our streets. There's the long-standing joke about drivers who do not have an inkling of what road signs mean, or simple cannot read, period. And there's the fact that even World War I vintage vehicles that spew black putrid smoke and have holes for front and back light assemblies CAN be registered and used in our streets, literally rolling coffins that endanger motorists and pedestrians alike. In short, two Es will go a long way in reducing the aggravation that we suffer when we take to the road: education and enforcement. 3

NU Paper 4 - JUAN VILLAMOR improving checkout at supermarkets

NU Paper: JUAN A. VILLAMOR, MBAH Section 10B

The Things That Piss Me Off at the Supermarket or Department Store

Like most good husbands, I accompany my wife on her weekly sojourn to the grocery or the almost-monthly shopping trip. Some days are easy, with just a few items on the list and shoppers are sparse. There are days, however, when going to the supermarket or department store is a real chore. Aside from the crush of people, the long lines at the checkout counters add to the aggravation. What especially irks me is when the lines stretch and weave around racks of clothes or grocery shelves, while empty cashier counters sit idly, unmanned and pleading to be of use.

I've often – as in 90% of the time – inquired from what seemed like supervisors, why they would not open additional checkout counters, given the long lines and the tedious, stressful wait that consumers have to endure. In almost the same number of times – with a very few exceptions – all I get are wry smiles, with the staff slowly backing away and disappearing in the throng of shoppers. In one out of around 20 cases, the supervisor actually calls on a reserve cashier, and not-so-promptly opens an empty checkout counter, and ever so proudly grins at me.

Before operations management, I only complained about the lack of customer relations skills of supermarket or department store personnel, even among supervisors and managers. As a general observation, customer service is way below the priorities of what ironically are deployed as "service" staff, from gasoline boys to barong-clad service personnel in high-end shops. Either you have to ask them to clean your windshield, or get passed around to get an otherwise simple inquiry addressed. Whether they are poorly paid or having a bad-hair day, personal or work-related issues are no excuse for lousy service.

Because of operations management, however, I now particularly appreciate the number of minutes I have to wait in line on checkout counters, and how service personnel organize their work to make a shopping experience worth looking forward to. I now wonder how a short course on operations management can actually benefit front-line staff, and earn the gratitude and admiration of their customers.   

Aside from the training expense, I don't think it will cost much to cut the lines and make the wait more bearable for shoppers. For one, it's not as if there are no counters; checkout counters are idle because supervisors and managers would not deploy people to man those counters. They assume its okay for people to wait in line for ages, without considering the possibility that those in the line are tired, hungry, have to catch another appointment, or just want to go home after tiring day.

On the contrary, what I think managers should do is begin counting the number of people lining up in any of their checkout counters, and more importantly, measuring the time any one of those people actually get to the cashier. In my experience, long lines actually dissuade people from making a purchase, especially if they can buy the same stuff from a similar yet less congested store. In short, while long lines may be a sign of good business, long lines are actually not good for the business, especially if efficiency is a major business parameter.

In my mind, the line to the checkout counter should not be longer than five people, and those in line should not wait more than five minutes to reach the cashier. Floor supervisors should be able to alert and deploy reserve cashiers if the line has more than five people, or people wait for more than five minutes before getting to the cashier. Toll gates in major expressways now deploy ambulant tellers, and there is no reason why supermarkets or groceries cannot deploy mobile cashiers to serve throngs of shoppers crashing checkout counters. 3

The quicker I'm able to fill up my shopping list, pay for my loot and leave the store, the more pleasurable will be my experience of parting with my hard-earned cash. <maybe while waiting they encourage you to make impulse buying>