Normative interactions, zombie processes et al.

One of the things that I have observed in industrialized societies is that most of their routine business interactions are in the normative realm, as opposed to interactions in India which are in the declarative realm. (Of course, this is based on my limited amount of experience in just a couple of industrialized countries; hence not a theory.) The routine interactions are driven by standard processes; the people involved in the interactions become part of the work flow seamlessly. Except when the people involved are like me who are either ignorant of the process or don't care enough about it.

As a result, the work flow gets disturbed, causing embarrassment to one and all. In fact, I have observed that it is quite simple to embarrass people or to get embarrassed over here. I am not saying that this is a great news. But it keeps happening to me inadvertently. In fast food joints, malls, or while dealing with customer support personnel. By and large everyone is courteous. However, as soon as they start sensing a deviation in the standard procedure, they start feeling uncomfortable; a lot of times they grow uncomfortable to the extent of taking offence.

But the real fun in the matter is that each place has its own process and you are expected to know it a priori! For example, if I call the customer care of the domestic gas provider, I should start by mentioning my address. If I start by giving my name, the tone changes. If I call the electricity provider, I should first give the name. Coffee cup sizes can be small, medium, large; or tall, grande etc.. And I think it's better if all the restaurants and pubs supply glossaries to the customers along with menus because the names of food and drinks make no sense. (I am not talking about exotic food or drinks; the usual ones are called by different names at different places.)

Fast food joints are places that make me feel like I am attending an interview. You ask for a veg sandwich, and the series of questions begins: size of the sandwich; type of bread; type of cheese; type of dressing; which vegetables; type of sauce; and so on. And every time I fumble because I have no idea about the options that I have, the chap's sense of disbelief increases. By the time I finish this gruesome combinatorial exercise, I have no appetite for the sandwich. At the same time, the annoyance on the fast food chap's face is visible. (I had once read a similar experience on a blog regarding this sandwich process. It was something like this - my mother didn't ask me so many questions when I told her I have girlfriend and I will marry her.)

This is not an one off experience. In fast food joints, you are expected to know their menu and go through their rapid fire round competently. And to my great surprise almost everyone seems to be more than competent! The only places where my incompetence is gladly tolerated, and where the employees even explain the things to me good-naturedly are very close to the campus. I figure their tolerance comes from their experience of dealing with international students daily. They probably understand that someone like me is not out to embarrass them.

I cannot form a theory based on a bunch of examples, but all these do indicate certain patterns. As I said, most interactions in India are declarative. I go to a darshini and ask for a masale dose, or may be even a nice and crispy masale dose. Once I have delegated that job, I wouldn't bother myself by micro-managing the process of making a masale dose. It's true that our restaurants are much more crowded and there is no place for individual choices. Further, most of our food does not follow a component based architecture. But I don't think these factors make a huge difference. Another question I have is, does this process of letting the customer making choices at every stage necessarily lead to a superior product or experience? I am not sure. Let's even concede that it does. But then, one of the things about eating out is delegating your work. If I have to micro-manage the process of eating out, I would rather cook for myself. For me, it removes the relief of delegation. I can't imagine myself going to a darshini and spending time answering questions or giving instructions instead of chatting with friends.

The bigger concern for me, of course, is this whole madness of methods. The very idea of tirelessly executing a process day in and day out scares me. It's natural that machines are left clueless when there is a deviation from a standard procedure that they execute. But how about humans? Perhaps, processes bring in efficiency. But I sometimes feel this is achieved at the cost of making humans behave like machines.

We live in interesting times indeed. On the one hand, we are trying to impose as many processes as possible, thus making ourselves behave more and more like machines; on the other hand we are trying to build intelligent machines that can behave and 'think' like humans, while fantasizing possible takeovers by super-intelligent machines!