By Alec Hogg
Five years ago, we were in a hurry to change trains on our way back from Davos. In the rush, we left a bag containing an iPad and cell phone. Only once the train had departed did we realise it. A couple hours later, the Swiss Railway Service had located the bag gave it to a friend who was on a later flight. Everything arrived as we’d left it.
This week, again coming back from Davos, we discovered too late that a cell phone had fallen out of a bag when it was shifted around the packed Swissair overhead locker. This time there has been no sign of the missing device. Then on Wednesday, my Standard Bank host arrived jacketless at the post-Davos presentation in Cape Town. It had been removed from his bag en route from Johannesburg.
Does that tell us something about the way morality is shifting? Haven’t a clue. But what I do know is that there is something very wrong when we accept how businesses simply shrug off such theft as the customer’s occupational hazard. It is rational that a company should accept full responsibility for the behaviour of its employees. They are paid to provide a service. Shifting the onus onto customers for a business’s poor hiring and incompetent management practices is just plain wrong.
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