Gelati Gecko Writes a Bitter Letter

Yes, it does seem to happen more often than is healthy, doesn't it...

I was booked last month for travelling on a tram without a valid ticket. At the time I was annoyed at being booked, as my I felt that I had done nothing wrong (forgetting to validate the ticket for the three minute trip), and was being targeted and made to feel like one of those people who never buy a ticket. I felt victimised, against all rationality.

Only today I received the letter from the Department of Transport with the details of my fine, asking that I pay it. Again I felt incredible anger seize me as I stared at their official letter. Rather than pushing my feeling of injustice aside as unreasonable (which it absolutely is), I decided to put aside logic, and allow my emotions to present their argument, without any censorship, so I might be able to better understand where these strong emotions were coming from. This letter is the result...

To Whom It May Concern,

I was flummoxed to recently receive a $172 fine from the Department of ‘Transport’ (if indeed this title in any way represents their alleged responsibilities). Not because I do not recall an incident in which I was travelling without a valid ticket on a tram, but because I had hoped that some common sense would apply in this situation. Although I now see that my naive assumption of common sense within the Department of Transport is contrary to all my previous dealings with them.

I have all my life been a law abiding user of public transport. I have owned a yearly ticket throughout my years at high school, and was using a yearly until the 28th of February this year. In the interim between using my yearly ticket and the appallingly introduced ‘myki’, I purchased a 10 x 2 hourly ticket which I used as I began my tertiary studies in the city. On the morning in question, I had validated my ticket on the way in. It was as I took the 3 minute tram ride up to Melbourne University in the afternoon that I forgot to validate my ticket on the tram, being used to using a yearly ticket. As I have never committed any previous ‘offence’ against the against the public transport system, it would be fair to say I am upset at the way in which I have been treated.

I have been made to feel like a criminal. From the wary condescension of the ticketing officers to the letter which informs me I have committed an ‘offence’ (carrying the implication that I have offended someone), I have not once felt like I was being treated as a valued customer of the Department of Transport who had made a mistake, but instead like a thief, criminal, or vagrant. Of course I know that this is because the Department places little value on their customers, knowing full well that for many there is no alternative to the shoddy joke that is the Melbourne train system.

All the same, it does raise the question of the relationships being established between the community and the Department of Transport. After being treated this way, I certainly have lost the little respect I ever held for this department, and should anyone besmirch the name of the Department of Transport in the future, I will be quite likely to let them go ahead – hey, I might even join in. By alienating and insulting your patrons, you only set yourselves up for the widely held bitterness and disdain heaped upon you by the public.

The fact that my irregular 10 x 2 hourly ticket was to tide me over until I switched to myki is also relevant, I believe. The information available on myki was disappointing at the time. Pamphlets were in abundance, but staff seemed to know little about myki, and it was extremely difficult to try and figure out if I was getting the best value (knowing full well that I wasn’t getting good value at all, it was more like trying to choose the least bad value).

Lastly comes the very concept of paying fines. The general idea in most cases, is that the public pay fines when they have committed a misdemeanour, and these fines are able to help fund benefits for the wider community. An admirable system. Only I honestly don’t trust the Department of Transport to appropriately spend the $172 which they are asking me for. Throwing quite literally hundreds of millions of dollars at the myki ticketing system, which ended up costing over a billion dollars (when a comparable system in London cost just over 200 million dollars), they don’t exactly inspire confidence. Rather, it might be best if I take my money and invest it into the transport system as I see fit – perhaps put it towards replacing some of the inadequate infrastructure that Connex had to work with. Notably, Metro is now in its third consecutive month of service, and after underperforming in each of those months, will receive a ‘formal warning’ from the very State Government responsible. Nice work.

The funniest part is that I know that none of what I have said above will count in any way. Valuing and caring for customers, spending funds appropriately, and providing a competent transport system have never appeared to be on the agenda for the Department of Transport. By the time you read this I will have already paid my fine, and sunk back into submission as an unwilling commuter on the Victorian transport system.

Yours in anger, sadness, disappointment, resignation, jaded cynicism, and impotent rage (all inspired by The Noble Department of Transport, no less),

Gelati Gecko


P.S. To whoever is reading, I realise you bear no responsibility for the sins of your employers and their forebears. I hope I made what must no doubt be a tedious job slightly more interesting.

...I think I'll send it.

Oh Nestle!

So in the Public Relations subjects of my course, we're looking at brand strategies and the ways in which companies are attempting to interact via social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

A recent focus has been on Nestle and their recent foray into Facebook with a fan page, which anybody can join and of course comment on. Unfortunately for Nestle, there are quite a few people who have issues with their business practices (namely cutting down rainforests in Indonesia for palm oil (used in Kit Kats), thus destroying natural habitats for endangered species such as the orangutan):

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/289481

Nestle's response can be found here:

http://www.nestle.com/MediaCenter/SpeechesAndStatements/AllSpeechesAndStatements/statement_Palm_oil.htm

And of course this has resulted in some less than desirable comments on their Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com//#!/pages/Nestle/24287259392

And on their photos on their Facebook page...

http://www.facebook.com//#!/photo.php?pid=1175186&id=24287259392&fbid=59312519392
(note the tags and comments)

So pretty much what was intended as a hip and trendy demonstration of Nestle's ability to be relevant and down with the younger generation, has backfired into Nestle setting up their own cyber punching bag, through which they are being mercilessly pummelled. They can't cut all the comments, nor have they been able to attract supporters.

...well I thought it was kinda interesting.

University Fire Drill

A routine university fire drill held today at a university in Melbourne failed abysmally, as some learning schools took over 3 hours to evacuate all their students, owing to overly wordy and complex emergency instructions from the teachers.

"It really didn't feel urgent," one Communications student commented afterwards. "Our lecturer just told us, 'for this drill to be effective, it is necessary to believe in the 'collective imagined emergency', a reality which must be embraced by the entire society of the university - remembering, of course, that this is a participatory form of communication, as distinct from interrogative, where an exchange of communication takes place. In this way, there are many contributions which together form the entirety of the so called 'fire drill'.' It seemed to me at the time a convoluted line of thought, which failed to provide any real insights into the fire drill."

Lecturer Griffythson held his ground. "Of course, I could have just read 'We are having a fire drill. You must all leave your books and materials in this room, and follow me to the assembly area'. But I felt it important to provide my students with a theoretical and academic commentary on the complex sociological interactions taking place. Remembering, of course," he added, "that the concept of a communicative entity or body, traversing a linear pathway of homogenous, vacuous time is highly relevant to such an example."