“This new travel card can only see its card balance via apps.” The ticket service crew says.
“What? Then the bus fare reading machine won’t show how much I’ve spent on the journey and value balance as well?” I ask. (What kind of dumb development we have here for public transportation travel card?)
“You’d have to download an apps, then read from the apps. After your journey ended, they (i.e. the apps) would send a message to your mobile phone to inform you how much fare you’ve spent on this journey.” She continues.
(How inconvenient this new apps bring to human beings?)
When in reality, we still need to tap in and tap out on the public transport’s fare reading machine. And now, the fare reading machine won’t show you any info but passenger would have to open the apps to retrieve the info when the fare reading machine is just right there in front of us (passengers).
There’s sarcastic elaboration in mandarin that goes “脱裤子放屁” – Pin Yin read as ‘Tuo Ku Zi Fang Pi’ – which, if direct-translate, it will be “taking your trouser off to fart”. In English, we have “to gild the lily” or “to put butter on bacon”. Same meaning – perform unnecessary and meaningless act, in short.
Aren’t we living in a rather forceful place? The local community are ‘forced’ to use and must adapt to the new technology (apps) even though it doesn’t bring any convenient or facilities to us. No other option available. The old travel card has already phased out; no longer be found in the market!
By switching to new apps, what I could see is that the merchant might be able to make more money when many people are using their new apps. Advertising through their apps or selling their apps to other bigger merchant company would be high-return to this apps developer.
As the users, what do we get? Inconvenience. Can’t you (apps developers) create something that would work with the public transport fare reading system? Keep thinking a way to get this done and then launch this apps when it could do that. We are humans, we create the apps, the apps should assist humans not humans to adapt to the lousy apps.
Why? why? why? why? why? why? why? why? why? why? why? why?
Another similar scenario that I see was at workplace. Our headquarter (HQ) has purchased and implemented a new bombastic apps that could help them in consolidating the financial results of all subsidiaries around the world. Brilliant apps, by right, that’s what I should say.
One day, I received an email from HQ asking us to breakdown our account code for inter-companies into much more detailed level. First thing that came through my mind was “What for?” Then, I shared this email request with my colleague (experienced accountant) by showing him this email request.
“Actually, many MNCs’ accounting systems can do the consolidation at higher level (meaning tally at net balance; i.e. in the end it is I owe you or You owe me); no longer needed to match line by line (e.g. I owe you $A; You owe me $B; I owe you $C).” He says.
“Precisely! Even when we worked with the external auditors, they also accept high-level reconciliation between inter-companies’ balance.” I agree with both hands.
“What was the purpose of tallying line-by-line? To sooth his (HQ) own throat or self-satisfaction (certain typical accounts person would love to feel the sense of achievements if they could tally everything to the decimal point.” I am a little sarcastic, I know. Reality could be ugly, just face it. I am an accounts staff myself and I was once enjoyed that kind of ‘Yes! All tally!’ kind of mental satisfaction, especially during exams. But later to find out that the exams marking system was not on the tallied numbers but the way you do the computation and to which account you posted it to. So, I learned to see the purpose behind each action.
I then replied an email to HQ asking for further clarification why we need to do such detailed matching work as that would definitely consume a lot of administrative work from local finance team. “Was it due to tax requirements or UK accounting rules that we must tally line-by-line? Local auditors, so far we don’t see any issue in tally inter-companies’ balance at high-level (net balance).”
He replied my email by saying we shouldn’t align to local auditors’ needs. In this new apps, we need to match line-by-line. Please get this implemented soonest possible.”
(Ha-ha~ He didn’t even answer my question! For the sake of that new apps? Our company invested so much money on this new apps; the aim is to make our work more efficient, isn’t it? Can’t we get the apps developers to re-configure and get rid of this ‘line-by-line’ matching needs? Hello? Since this detailed matching is not required by any authority or regulations, why make our life difficult?)
I just can’t understand their mindset… So, humans are supposed adapt to Apps and not the other way round. Tired living in this ‘forceful’ environment that people tend to simply obey without giving it much thought.
Mr. Okay and Ms. Okay are everywhere.