24/6/21: let your yes be yes…

Greetings from the UK! A very great pleasure to be here for the next few weeks, some of the specific reasons will become apparent in future blog posts. With all the paperwork in place, including a negative COVID test before setting out, Passenger Locator Form for both UK and Belgium (albeit I didn’t leave the transit area), ordering a COVID kit for day two and day 8, the travelling itself was pretty straightforward. Although – slightly disconcerting to be sharing the Brussels airport transit lounge with people wearing full HAZMAT suits, do they know something I don’t?

So currently self-isolating, knew this was going to happen, slightly surprised to be getting ‘phone calls at least once a day to be checking I am complying, on pain of a £10 000 fine. Taking the opportunity to get ahead with some schoolwork so taking the pressure off the beginning of next term. Many thanks to Mum and Dad for putting up with me!

But there’s one niggle I’d like to tell you about. When I ordered the UK testing kit I got an email headed, “REQUIRED – ACTIVATE YOUR TEST”. The email itself included, “Once you receive your test kit, you will need to activate it on the online portal using the barcode on the test tube. The link is provided below.” And then concludes, “PLEASE ENSURE YOU ACTIVATE THE CORRECT BARCODE FOR THE TEST YOU ARE SENDING.” All of which is perfectly clear, isn’t it? With capital letters to help me just in case I’m misunderstanding anything.

So, day 2 – last Sunday – arrives, the day for the first test. So, obedient chap that I am, I follow the link to register the code number for the test tube in which I will be sending the swab back. To get the error message, “We don’t recognise that serial number, please check you have entered the serial number correctly and that the kit hasn’t expired, if so please phone for help.” I try various different combinations of zeroes and the letter O, different spacing, nothing works.

Then to look at the wording on the leaflet with the kit more carefully. “Your test kit has already been activated by the company you purchased the kit from. No online test kit activation is required by you.” Oh, really? Meanwhile, alongside the error message, I see the following text: “If you have purchased your test kit via one of our sales partners your test kit may have already been activated. Therefore, if you try to activate your test kit via this page, you will receive an error message. In which case, you do not need to submit your test kit barcode as it has already been activated. Please do not contact customer services for help. Please proceed to follow the instructions provided with your test kit on how to take the sample and return to the laboratory. Thank you.”

By this time, I’m thoroughly confused. Do I need to register the sample or not? Do I phone for help – as I’m told in one place – or not – as I’m told in another? Given the wording of the error message, how can I be sure that my test tube has already been registered and that I’m not making some mistake? It had become apparent that I have bought the kit from a distributor, even though I’m trying to fill in the code number from the manufacturer into the manufacturer’s website, they’re nevertheless insisting that I contact the distributor for any help I might need. Which doesn’t open on Sundays. Meanwhile, I’m required to submit a test on the Sunday on pain of a £10 000 fine.

Whilst I was still pondering this somebody called me from ‘Track and trace’ to reassure me that the right thing to do was take and send in the test without further registration. Some days then went by without hearing the results of the test, so, concerned that the test tube may not be linked back to me, I finally ‘phoned the distributor to be told my test had been activated, and what I needed to understand is that the same email telling people that they needed to activate the test is sent to everyone irrespective as to whether they need to activate it or not.

I do make every effort in these situations to be polite to the person I’m speaking to, but I’m afraid I may not have been entirely successful on this occasion. I mean, really? You are seriously telling me I should be happy to be told that I need to activate my test when in fact I don’t need to – in fact, am not able to – because other people do need to? Do you genuinely suppose, after that explanation, I’m going to say, “Oh, right! Yes, that makes sense! Of course you should tell me to activate the kit because other people need to!”

Time to finish the rant and reflect a bit. I understand that this is all very new, so it is not surprising that communication errors of this nature are being made. I also understand that defending oneself is a very natural reaction, not just in humans, of course, which can then get generalised to one’s employer.

But in the face of clear evidence of contradictory instructions being given, surely the response should be, yes, you’re right, that shouldn’t have happened, let me check that out for you. Why the need to try to justify ourselves long after it is clear that, in effect, we are trying to argue that black is white? What is that expression about holes and not digging further?

This isn’t, of course, the first time that I’ve met this kind of thing. When I was in Dar es Salaam I on one occasion had a pair of glasses sent to me from the UK which got stuck in customs, in the end I had to pay a considerable fee to get them out. In the period when they were in an office in DSM before I could get them, the shipping company tracking was saying that they had been delivered. But they hadn’t. Tracking was wrong. It’s that simple. So why, when I queried this, did I have to listen to long complicated explanations trying to reconcile the tracking information with the lack of my glasses in my hot sweaty hand (or on my hot sweaty head, I suppose)? Again, surely this is trying to argue that black is white?

Jesus Christ taught (Matthew 5:37), ‘Let your yes be yes.’ Don’t let things get complicated, keep things simple. If necessary, apologise. It is often the case, as a school teacher, that what matters is not so much what happens in the first instance – teachers understand that it is the nature of the job that we need to deal with minor bits of disruption here and there – but what the reaction is in the aftermath.

This point is taken up by Ajith Fernando in his wonderful commentary on the Acts of the Apostles for the New International Version Application Commentary series. As the Sri Lanka director for Youth for Christ, he frequently worked with young converts to Christianity from Buddhism bursting to tell people about Jesus. One part of his training particularly struck me. We understand, he would tell his raw recruits, that you are going to mess up. It is going to happen, we can deal with it when it happens. But never, never, NEVER try to lie your way out of trouble.

Which is good advice, isn’t it? Keep things simple. If you mess up, own up. Accept the consequences, move on. Quite possibly to discover – as St Peter did after he repented following his denial of Jesus in the run up to His crucifixion – that after repentance your standing is actually higher than it was before.

As things stand I’m still waiting for the day 2 COVID results, with the day 8 test due on Saturday, looking forward to being able to get out and about. Some feedback to give to track and trace etc. when the time is right. But in the meantime my plea – keep things simple, this is the path of wisdom. I’ll finish here, thank you for reading!