who is to blame?

Yesterday as an eventful day.

I got up reluctantly to go play badminton. I like playing but I also realsie that if I don’t get enough seep I should be sleeping nd not playing sport. I think sacrificing sleep and going for fitness is a recepie for disaster. So I always try and get my sleep first and play later. But hell, Jispa also takes the opportunity to go to the gym when I go for badminton. Those are the alternate days on which they don’thave their swim and so it works out really well.

I took her to the gymkhana and suddenly while stepping out of the car she was in severe pain. What happened? She jammed the door on herself. Huh? Ya. Only Jispa can do that. She jammed the car close on her own finger. Oh dear, it was bad and the finger was blue. We ran up to the ice machine and got her finger in a glass full of ice. Now the eternal question – should I fuss over her and take her home or should I play the game while she waits on the sidelines with her finger.

The father in me wanted to play the gaem but the husband in me knew, that would be trouble when I get home. Jasmine would have fired me for letting her daughter hang around in pain while I played badminton. I told Jispa that we can go home. She was ok to let me play but still, I have been more years a husband than a father. I have been trained well on what to do. I went back.

In the afternoon another incident happened. I got free lunch at the restaurant SodaBottleOpenerwala. Yup. That is a name of restaurant. It serves Parsi cuisine. I called up Jasmine and told her – “you know there is good news. I got free lunch today”. “Why” she asked. Err… “That’s the bad news.”. She then guessed “they served you lactose food”. “no, Because they served me prawn curry”. “and you ate it?”. “Yes” I replied. “I ordered for the veg Parsi curry and the waiter got the curry. I started eating it and I was thinking about the fact that it has no vegetables but only chewy soya bullets. (I am still cringing). I even offered it to my friend who is also a vegetarian and she also ate it thinking its soya. Then I saw the distinctive shape of the prawn and I asked the waiter – what is this? He looked at it and pat came the reply – its prawns. And then he freezes for a second and looks at me and says – you ordered veg. Then he runs into the kitchen and comes back and tells me that I had ordered veg but the cook screwed up and he is getting the manager. The manager came and apologized.”

Ok. I ate what I thought was an ugly prawn dish. I was holding my head in my hand. What would my reaction be? Should I scream and shout? Should I break his head, should I demand a free meal... for life? Should I throw a fit? I just looked at my friend and we looked at each other and were wondering what to do. I simply told him, that go away for a minute and I just took stock of all the thoughts that were racing in my mind. Ok. I had the prawns. It’s not that I have a huge issue with non veg. I have no religion that went kaput, I had no belief that were altered. It’s ok. It’s a human mistake. It’s just that prawns look yucky and they feel yucky to eat. It’s a full body that went inside my mouth and I can feel the crunchy chewy feeling.

So I simply called the guy and asked him to take the food away. He wanted to replace the food. I was in no mood to eat anything else. I asked for fresh lime to wash the feeling. Hahah… now that I say it, fresh lime juice, sweet and salty, less sweet is my ganga jal which washed away the sins of eating it. Haha. What to do with the waiter. Its human error. Can really fault him for this. That’s why some of my friends and their parents who have huge issues eating non veg even accidently don’t go to the places that serve non veg. that’s why they go to vegetarian only restaurants.

In Mumbai there is a huge market for veg only places and the same is replicated across India. Veg only is a big thing that is extremely important to the vegetarians. Such risks are something they are not happy taking. So now when I look at them and wonder and ask them – why… I know the answer. It’s a question of risk which is unacceptable. Like I was explaining to my friends in office. Its ok to get this once in a while. I go to non veg joints and order veg food. I get the pleasure of eating at different places. In all these years it’s only normal and very very statistically probable that I would get one instance of non veg in error. The world doesn’t work with six sigma efficiency, which also allows of 3.4 defects per million. And with India having 1.3 billion people and also many trying to be vegetarian and a subset of them eating veg at non veg places, the odds are that you will get prawns in your lifetime. Now that I got it and the waiter and the manager as well the cook skipped a heartbeat, they will be more careful the next time – the follow up odds of them screwing up are lesser and then will have to wait for one more million people to eat from their hands for another 3.4 errros to creep in – that is if they are at 6 sigma.

If they are working at less then, more will happen. So why get angry at them. They were only trying to do their job. Possibly the cook needs glasses and is not rich enough or educated enough to get them. Possibly the waiter should be trained for checking the food against the order. Possibly the manager must make checklist of the food every time. The management must constantly train for this and every time this happens a root cause analysis must be done and the process must be fixed. Possibly all of this must happen and I am 100% sure that none of this happens and yet I eat… continue to eat here. And hence IT IS ME WHO IS TO BLAME FOR THE CONSEQUENCES. Why should I then scold the guy? Why?

how many sigmas?

Last week the tiffinwala, - the fabled buys with 6 sigma accuracy, the guys who got a whole lot of media coverage, who got visited by Prince Charles, the guys who were invited for his second wedding, the guys whom Harvard business school students studied etc etc… yes those very same guys, famous around the world for their accuracy, the guys who tirelessly collect your food from home and bring it to your office everyday in a tiffin with unequalled accuracy using a method of codes on the tiffin, those very same famous tifffin walas also called the dabbawala of Mumbai, those guys last week ….. misplaced by dabba (tiffin). They put it somewhere else. They managed to trace it back and then they handed it over to us the next day. A ha. Six sigma accuracy is only 99.99966% accurate. I understand, but interestingly this has happened to me the second time in the last two months. Hah!
I guess the 0.00044% hit me twice in a row. How bad is that? Was I at my unluckiest best, or should I day unluckiest worst!? Now there are two ways to look at it. I might have been the unluckiest person to get it twice but I might be very lucky that all my bad luck got exhausted on the humble tiffin. Imagine being hit by that kind of bad luck on the road.
Like I always say when we are doing events or even while doing routine work. Never keep your eye off the ball. A 1% probability does not mean that you won’t be hit 99 times. You could get at the first instance. And after getting hit it does not mean that you cat get hit for another 99 instances. You could just as well be hit again, and again and again. Probability does mean for shit. You always have to keep your eye on the ball and be prepared.
So what’s the bigger problem? Those with a higher probability of occurrence or those with a lower probability of occurrence? That’s an eternal question. The Higher ones are easier to deal with. Since they have higher probabilities, they tend to be managed and you can be prepared for them. The lower ones are the ones that will catch you unprepared. If you think enough, the higher probabilities can be sufficiently thwarted, like building a roof over a reception area in the monsoon. But you would typically not plan for one during winter in Mumbai. You only need to plan well enough and quip yourself with adequate knowledge of all around you.
Over a period of time you negate the higher ones and keep your eyes out for the lower ones. You keep thinking, anticipating and looking for ways in which things can go wrong. You buy insurance against some stuff, you equip yourself for some and for some you merely think through. The last ones left are the unforeseen ones. If you are aware enough and you have had enough exposure, you should be pretty cool. Akin to the simple process of remembering where the exit or reading through the escape plan that’s at the back of hotel doors.
Shit always happens. It will come at you and you can’t really anticipate it but, if you keep your eyes and ears open and keep your observations sharp, you should be ok most of the time. I assume at least 99.99966% of the time.

So that day I had to eat outside. My friend took me to this really cheap place where I had this amazing meal. It was really cheap and the meal was very filling. It was a limited thali, only a limited amount of food is served. The price? 25 rupees. About half a dollar. It included… here.. have a look at it. The bowl of rice follows later.

My wife remarked that at 25 bucks a day and 5 days a week, it’s cheaper for me to eat outside than to have the dabbawala who charges 550 bucks for the delivery alone.