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I took a half-day holiday to go to the Calgary Zoo with my wife, my baby and some friends.
At the gate, when I presented our three membership cards, I and I alone was hit with my card 'coming up with an error'. Apparently, when the zoo switched its systems, some of the data "didn't make it" (this was the explanation at both the booth and Membership Services).
Now data migrations can, indeed, be a nightmare, but you test, and you hedge your bets by keeping the old data around somewhere, just in case. It was a little aggravating that it was a "known problem" and they had not gone the extra mile and tried pulling in the data that they missed, but so be it.
What was more unforgivable was that, though it was not my fault, the gal working the ticket booth, despite the membership card trouble not being my fault, despite my other family members' cards working, despite us being in a group, and despite busloads of children arriving in droves, she did not apologetically let me through, but rather, despite explaining the circumstances (and having the other members of our group already in the Zoo), sent me back to the membership services to wait for the better part of half an hour to sort out my card.
People, if you are going to screw up a data migration and decide to just handle the "oops" cases manually, tell your staff not to inconvenience the hell out of the people that you let fall through your data cracks for your own convenience. It's rude.