MY AFRICAN TIME

My African Time:1

I just thought of sharing this with my other Africans and I believe what I am going to share with you is part of every African’s tale. As I am writing this post I have been stuck here for more than two hours and I am just thinking of changing the service but I have no option because this seems to be the cheapest shop in town and it is also the one that is accepting the electronic payment methods here in Zimbabwe as the rest are just demanding cash payments. My worry is not on the payment method or the pricing but on the attitude of their workers, I arrived here 10 minutes before midday and I was told that they were going for lunch, and I waited patiently and now more than 2 hours has elapsed but still they are nowhere to be found and a few minutes as I started writing my article on my phone, they poop up and they are moving slowly to their office and everyone quickly stood in a well-organized waiting to be served, but to my surprise the lady looks at us with a smile and she notified us that their lunch ended at 1430h.

This statement quickly sent shivers down my spine as I had an appointment at 1500h and I could not help as I tried to fume, protest, or question as I was told as young child by my parents that it was not good to voice to elders so I quickly tried to put up a smile, and continued to type my article. A few minutes later I was served and I tried to question them why they had such a long lunch, and she only told me that their job was straining and demanding so there was need for more rest.

As I said before that every African has a tale of some sort where they were delayed by some selfish people who think that just because they are in that position, where they just have to put their signature on my papers or documents, they deserve more time to rest since they are overworking not realizing that those same papers that I need signed, I would have spent more time reading for exams, working for that pension, money, deal etc.

This selfish mentality has held us back as a continent as we are not time conscious, we think we have all the time to do all we want but the truth is that we only have 24h a day and the moment you make someone to wait for a signature stand for 2 hours what more of when you want your papers typed and send to the head office, and no wonder why we take so much time to have companies registered, approvals and have your papers processed. So much time is wasted on little things particularly in our African offices, and as organization if ever we want to be productive, we need  to formulate and encourage our members to be time conscious, and improve our service delivery and this will obviously see our profits souring to great heights.

Time is money and everyone should value their time and also respect other people’s time and desist from the habit of robbing others their value. With good time management, you can improve your working relations, reduce stress, improve communications skills, reduced workload etc. For this article I will leave it here and check my next article on My African Time 2

By Tinashe Bonde