Humans or Robots?

 

I mention this because it is prevalent everywhere now.  Many people have experienced it with their Doctors.  If your total cholesterol is over 200 you must go on a statin.  Even if the Doctor doesn’t even believe in statins they will still prescribe them because they may be working in a clinic or hospital…where those are the rules, and they are afraid of not following them even if it is not in the best interests of their patient.

I had an experience a couple of days ago which you may enjoy…non-medical.

When I fly to our Thailand office I usually use Emirate Airlines who fly direct to Bangkok via Sydney.  I always find this a bit annoying going via Sydney because I never have check in luggage and therefore I cannot take my favourite bottle of New Zealand wine with me.  Even if it is purchased at duty free in NZ and sealed with the invoice.  This is because under the Australian rules anything over 100mls is prohibited.

It’s a bit silly in this case as you walk of the plane through security in a secure area and then back on to the same plane again.  Total duplication of effort.

Anyway, this trip I had a 100ml pump action type bottle which I had our final formulation of our new facial foaming wash. I was taking it with me to give our Thai staff a chance to try it before signing off on the formula.  I should mention that this has been in development for almost 2 years and we have tried dozens of samples. It has been a real challenge to get the results and still keep it natural…but, we have now succeeded.

But, we only had one bottle left and that was the one I had in my little plastic bag.  We are ready to go into production with it provided our Thai staff are happy with it, so we don’t want to spend more time producing further samples.

Anyway, one of the human ‘robots’ in the Australian security zeroed in on this bottle and noted that it did not have an official manufacturers label on it stating 100mls.  I explained that it was a sample bottle and that we were the manufacturer and that it is a 100ml bottle as we purchased thousands of them to hold 100mls.

However that was not good enough and he wanted to confiscate it.  I then told him to get his supervisor…i.e. the senior ‘robot’.

He came down and sung the same tune.  So, I suggested a few options.  One is that I could write out a label on the spot saying it contains 100mls and stick it on the bottle and sign it as the manufacturer which I am authorised to do.  No, that was not good enough.

OK…what about if we get a notary to come down and I give a sworn statement that it does not contain more than 100mls.  No, that won’t work either.

What about if I eat some of the contents…to which I squirted some out and ate it.  Nope, that didn’t work either.

OK…let’s tip the contents out into a container which is a 100mls and marked as that.  This would prove that the container would only accept 100mls.  We could then put the contents back into the original bottle.  Nope…that won’t work either.

As you can appreciate I was not very impressed by the time we got to this stage.

So, I thought I would concede.  I said OK, hold it here for an hour and I will call my office in NZ and they will arrange for a courier to pick it up and courier it to Thailand.  Nope, can’t do that.  When asked why…they are not a storage facility and are not allowed to hold anything.  I then point out they are storing things because they throw it in a bin they have there anyway.  Couldn’t they just stick it on top of the bin for an hour?  Nope…against the rules.

I then once again repeated to the supervisor/manager that as far as I understood the rules provided for the bottles not to exceed 100mls and there was no requirement for a bottle to have an official manufacturers sticker on it.  I asked them if that was his ‘rule’ or the company he worked for?  He said the Australian government’s rules.

I then went to the Emirates lounge and brought up on my laptop the Australian government website with the regulations about carrying liquids.  As expected there was no reference to a bottle having to have a manufacturers label on it.  Of course it is very explicit about the maximum size being 100mls.

So, back to the security section again.  They called the supervisor/manager down again and I had the laptop open at the Australian government website setting out the regulations.  I reminded him that he said he was just enforcing the Australian government rules and asked him to show me where the rules supported his contention.  Once again he said the bottle mustn’t be over 100mls.  I said no argument there and we both know that the bottle is not over 100mls but where is the rule about the manufacturers’ label.

There isn’t one.

But, he still wouldn’t budge.  In the meantime this was providing some entertainment for other travellers.  

So, I then explained to him that if he won’t  give it back we will sue him and his employer as the delay that could result from us being about to commence production of this product by him confiscating that bottle could cost us 10’s of thousands of dollars and I would make sure it came out of his hide.

With that I turned and walked away.  As I walked away he called out to me:  I’ll give you one last chance!

Excuse me... you will give ME one last chance?  And, what would that be?  He said if Emirates were prepared to accept it then he will give it back.  So, I called Emirates, he gave it to them and then they gave it back to me.

My parting announcement to all the security people who had all stopped work to follow the entertainment is that they should learn to have some common sense, display some initiative and stop being so afraid of everything.  At the end of the day it was only fear that got me back the bottle…in this case the fear of being sued.

I share this story with you because I think that it is important that we as individuals stick up for our rights when the occasion demands it instead of being bullied around by people who are too afraid to display a little common sense and initiative. I think that the world would be a better place if more people displayed a better level of cooperation.