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A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
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November 17, 2005 12:03 AM
Broken: Shower signs
Simon courage points out:
I saw this sign in a shower at a waterskiing lake in Devon (UK).
This is obviously broken. First of all, how did the person fitting the shower not realize?
Wouldn't it be better to put the effort into fixing the thing instead of making a couple of signs?
I guess anyone in the staff can make signs and put them there, but cannot - or isn't allowed to, or doesn't think is allowed to - fiddle around with the actual installation.
And it's surely cheaper and faster than a professional plumber...
This may have been a temporary solution to the problem. Better than an out of order sign, is it not?
Hey, it reminds me of the kitchen sink my husband installed 5 months ago and still hasn't bothered to fix. LOL
Do approve of the comment about taking pictures in a shower area. Although I will point out that it appears to be fully unoccupied at the time.
As for the signs they do look VERY new, they are also mounted in such a way as they would not really last long. That leads me to suspect that it is highly probable that repair is planned in the very near future, and this is in fact a better solution than an "out of order" sign. It may in fact be a good example of a seriously nonbroken customer experience.
Here you have an item that is very much needed for customer comfort. It appears that all of the items in fact have the same problem. It is possible with extra instructions, for the customers to use the time; and so instead of labeling it out of order it is labeled with emergency procedures for use. This a good planning of a fall back provided the plumber has been called to deal with a real fix. If it had been me an extra sign saying exactly "Yeah we know, the plumber has been called and is on the way" would have been included.
Of course the other question is "what happened to cause this in the first place ????? "
I think you remove the signs and be done. Nothing like hearing "OWWWWwww" and "BURRRrrr" to make your day go faster.
Broken only if you need to use the showers.
I'd just like to comment on Ray's suggestion for another sign to be posted saying that the plumber is on the way. Maybe that's okay if the plumber literally is going to arrive in a couple hours, but it's entirely misleading if the repair is scheduled at some time days or weeks in the future. I think it's a mistake to say a problem is being fixed before someone's even taken the first step toward addressing the issue.
Maybe nothing wrong with the plumbing, just can't figure out the faucet, as in http://www.thisisbroken.com/b/2005/10/faucet_design.html
I think it's odd that there's TWO identical signs. Yeah, there's two showers, but they share the same wall that the sign is on. It's not like (most) people would assume it just applied to ONE of the showers. And if someone's that dumb, well, then THEY'RE broken.
The fact that there are two signs could be that somebody told the person that posted the signs to put these signs up by the showers and they were just following directions!
I agree. I once worked for a very broken place. If the boss told you to hang both signs, you better do it, no ifs, ands, or buts...
Hey DX you are gennerally correct. If I was managing this situation, in addition to hanging the sign I would also ahve the plumber on the way. I don't know about the couple of hours. I would probably wait till the end of day and do it after hours. But barring a major problem the problem would be fixed by the time we opened the doors the next day. If there were to be a major problem that prevented a fix this fast, I would put up a sign listing what that problem was and when we would have the problem fixed.
If the problem turns out to be a "broken" design of the fixtures themselves I would still do what needed to be fixed to allow the signs to come down.
I think people are missing the point - the plumbing of the shower isn't something that suddenly goes wrong. It would be like this when they first installed the thing.
The showers are not new and must have been like this for ages - instead of fixing it they put up signs!
The really broken thing is how the installer got such a fundamental thing so terribly wrong.
What good would getting a plumber? He messed it up the first time. We had a plumber hook the hot water up to our toliet. He didn't come back to fix it for 2 weeks. But our tushies were nice and soft.
What good would getting a plumber do? He messed it up the first time. We had a plumber hook the hot water up to our toliet. He didn't come back to fix it for 2 weeks. But our tushies were nice and soft.
Roger is right. There is a campground in Longcreek, South Carolina that is just like that, only without signs. My Aunt tipped me off after waiting 20 minutes for it to warm up, then giving up, then finding out.
Here in Texas you will often see signs posted along the highway: "Guardrail damage ahead."
Seriously, wouldn't it be easier to just fix the guardrail damage instead of posting the stupid sign?
More to the point: If you need a guardrail, it isn't exactly like you get to choose the place where you are going to hit it. The whole point of guardrails is to keep the unexpected from getting worse. Putting up a sign is simply saying, in effect, "If you are going to have an unforseen accident, don't have it here." Heck, if I could do anything about it, I wouldn't have the accident at all and wouldn't need the guardrail.
Signs like these can gain the support of the user, and help prevent frustration and possible injury to the user - but without any accountability for who is working on the problem and when it shuld be fixed, it also removes much of the pressure and accountability on the manager and service people that should be working hard to serve their customers. In my view, without a measureable statement (it will be fixed by close of business tomorrow, with dates), it becomes meaningless excuse-making, and in fact will create frustration for the user.
I rented an apartment in Texas that had the hot and cold reversed in the bathtub/shower. The development was about 3 or 4 years old and no-one had asked it to be fixed!
I imagined my 70 year old mother coming to visit and being scalded to death in the bath. It didn't take me long to call the management and get it fixed ASAP.
Ignorance is strength.
Freedom is slavery.
It's transparantly obvious what those signs mean, but it's still hilarious. Someone needs to 'shop that into a pic of the Big Brother poster.
I bet they had one sign but people kept asking "which shower is the sign for?" when it's both showers.
Hard to believe but as a retired builder I know this is a fairly common error. There typically no hot water available when the new hookup is made so the plumber has a 50/50 chance of the traditional left pipe being hot and right being cold. Dangerous if left "as is" and should have been caught on final inspection when water heater was operative. To color code the pipe itself would take some thought!
I would walk up to the shower saying "I'm cold." and that would be the lever I'd turn. Or "I'm hot." and turn the hot lever for relief.
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wet is dry
dry is wet
dirt is soap
soap is dry
first is last
last is first
Posted by: WTF at November 17, 2005 01:42 AM