YATS!
Ok, so I'm partial to acronyms: they make for good mnemonics. Today's acronym is special because the last letter stands for another acronym, which makes this, what, a super-acronym?
Maybe.
YATS stands for Yet Another Technology Snafu and snafu, of course, stands for situation normal all... er... up. You get it, I'm sure, everybody's been there.
At the start of the weekend, a bunch of us friends decided to meet for dinner at one of the city's more famous and better Chinese restaurants. We were four couples and, rather than get into the usual Indian hosting tussle about who gets to pay the bill (used to amuse my kids no end when they were younger), we decided to be all grown up and mature about this and opted to split the bill four ways. Two of us had plastic and the other two wanted to pay with real Gs.
(Semantic aside: "real Gs" are thousand-rupee notes that have Gandhiji's portrait on them. Unlike some other currencies, all denominations of Indian currency notes have a portrait of Gandhi (G) on them, but only the thousand rupee notes have a colloquial nomenclature that matches the initial, a 'grand' being a thousand, and hence abbreviated to a 'g'.)
(Philosophical aside: Why does the RBI print on the currency notes it issues, a portrait of the only Indian leader who can honestly be said to have had no interest in money? Perhaps we should change the portrait with each issue of notes to show a more recent politician or two, who are rather well known to be interested in money. That would have the twin advantages of making the currency more current (ha, ha) as well as stymieing the counterfeiters.)
Back to the story.
We asked the maitre d' to split the bill four ways. He said, no can do. 'Our software does not allow that. And we cannot split the bill for liquor.'
Ok-a-a-y.
The two who wanted to pay real Gs gave the other two their share and the two plastic warriors put down their cards and asked the waiter to split the bill in two.
No can do, sir. 'Our software does not allow that. And we cannot split the bill for liquor.'
Huh.
So put the entire liquor bill on one card, and put part of the food bill on that card, and the rest on the other card, so that both cards get an equal charge. A ten year old with a pocket calculator could do that faster than it took me to type out this paragraph. My neighborhood paanwalla could work that out in his head.
'Sorry, sir, our software does not allow that. We can only do an equal split on two cards.'
I thought technology was supposed to be an enabler. Here's one business that has succeeded in shooting itself squarely in the foot using technology. Unfortunately, it has plenty of company.
We ended up doing sums on the back of the bill, exchanging more real Gs with each other and generally destroying the satisfied feeling that follows a good meal. Next time, we'll fight over the bill. It's easier than lousy software.
