communication

My office is offering a 3 day seminar on communication, so I signed up. I thought it would be interesting to see how big of a role language plays. It turned out that everyone in the office had signed up for the seminar and there were only 3 native Hebrew speakers there. The rest were Russian speakers and one other American.
The first day was interesting as we learned about some of the obvious problems with people communicating. Hopefully the next two sessions will be just as fun and informative.

I was communicating with some of the guys at work today (from the FSU) and they felt pretty strongly that we need the death penalty for service people who don't come when they promise to. Actually, only one of them insisted on the death penalty. The other one thought you should take a bb gun and shoot out their windows every night until they come to answer your call.

At least it confirmed that the problem with service in Israel is very bad. One guy's contractor has promised every day for a month that he will come tomorrow, to finish up some work that he is in the middle of. Another guy couldn't get the air conditioning service people to talk to him.

This is not a problem with language, this is a problem with lack of quality. The only way to survive is to know people who know people. When we had a problem with water in our basement, a friend called the plumber who owed him a favor and he came over right away. I am sure that without that help, we would still be waiting for him to come over.

Communication is very important. You have to be able to make sure that service people understand that it is in their best interest to come over. It all comes back to it's not what you know, it's who you know.