Back home

Last week was my first article after a break of two months, which I spent in the Netherlands with my family. We had a good time together and the opportunity to connect with relatives and friends. We normally take a longer break than the common few weeks because we find it important to take a step back, refresh ourselves and spend time with each other and close friends.
As I drove around town the day before our departure I couldn't suppress a certain feeling of relief not to have to be here during the rains, which are the cause of some inconveniences to say the least; leakages in the house and mud outside, to mention just two. I also looked forward to leave the road constructions behind and drive on smooth asphalt instead. "When we come back, most of the road constructions will be completed," I thought. After all there was a certain sense of urgency with the millennium celebrations just around the corner.
Coming back two months later I was rather shocked to find exactly the opposite. Most of the roads that I use and that were under some sort of construction or the other are still in the same state as I left them. No progress at all. What happened? Sure enough, the rains will frustrate some construction works but I suspect that there are other reasons behind the delays as well, most likely related to contract and pay matters.
As we spent time in the Netherlands I couldn't help but observe some of the differences between my two home countries.
What caught my eyes in the first place was the fact that people spend money. No matter what time of the day or what day of the week, people are shopping and buying. This is an indicator that the economy must be doing well. Healthy growth figures and low unemployment rates confirm this. While shopping you will do well though to check and compare prices and quality of goods in several places, as the differences could be quite substantial.
On the other hand, there seem to be shops for everybody's wallet. It is amazing how people have been able to adjust themselves as prices have increased sharply since the introduction of the Euro, while wages haven't followed the same trend.
As the low unemployment rates suggest, employers have a hard time finding workers especially in the service industry. At the same time, businesses train their personnel to be able to handle multiple tasks. Bank employees attending to their customers must be able to act as a teller, provide advice and solve some of the problems that their clients present them with. Compare this with shops and businesses here where there are several people employed to do just one thing. Think again.
At the same time businesses are set up more and more in a way for the clients to do things themselves. Internet banking, travel reservations, checking in, shopping, searching for information and many more things are now done by the clients themselves, while the role of the employees of the business is becoming more to show their clients the way instead of doing it for them.
While businesses, companies, organizations and individuals have all modern technology at their fingertips, this does not mean though that all is done efficiently. At a certain moment, in every problem that you need to have solved, the human factor comes in and this has become such a scarce commodity that many issues get delayed. Your problem will be solved in the end but it may take time. Long waiting lists for hospitals are but one example.
I was also confronted again by the fact that in a country like the Netherlands, a contract is a contract, no matter what. I had bought a smart phone together with a combined subscription for mobile telephone services, email and internet. The same day I found out that the language of the telephone's display and its windows operating system were installed in Dutch. I tried to change the settings to English but failed. Calling customer services I was told that this was not possible. This is not what I wanted so I went back to the shop, hopeful that I'd be able to change the phone for another. The answer was simple and straight forward. It was not possible. I had signed a contract and bought the phone that goes with it. End of the story. Explaining my case to a more senior person didn't help at all and customer services could not serve me anymore. Once a contract is signed, that's it.
Here contracts are much less strictly adhered to. The Ethiopian culture allows more for solving a dispute in a so called amicable way. That sounds nice but we also see that contracts are easily breached by either side. This happens with any kind of contract and between any two kinds of parties.
Relating this to the issue of employment, I hear business owners complain that sometimes employees tender their resignation without observing the notice period, agreed upon in the employment contract. Such unethical behaviour may leave the company in a crisis, depending on the role the employee played at work. Forcing him to stay would not motivate the employee to put in any useful work, so the company is counting her losses and turns around quickly to try and recruit a new worker.
There are many more differences that one can observe between the ways business is done in different countries. And there is no place where everything is perfect, so we tend to complain about the things that don't work for us, instead of appreciating the things that do work well. In other words, instead of seeing that the glass is half empty, it is better to realise that it is actually half full.