We made it bozza!!

“I’ve arrived” the uber Driver’s message reads as he parks outside my house. “Be right there” I respond as I quickly finish up my breakfast and say my goodbyes. I’m on my way to Lanseria Airport. As I load my bags in the boot, I greet the driver and he says “Lanseria”? "Yebo baba" I respond. “Boarding in 30 minutes” I say passively as I sit in the car seat. “Ahhh... yaaass!! we must go then” he responds as he takes off... literally

Within the complex, the gentleman overtakes one car, then a security van and just as we approach the gate he overtakes a third. As the boom gate goes up, it’s almost like the checkered flag at the start of a formula 1 race has just been waved.

Out the gate we go and the real formula 1 race begins. Swinging from one side of the road to another, hooting at everyone and overtaking everything in sight, it appears I have either just activated this gentleman’s race car driving dream or enabled some sort of relapse with the simple words “boarding in 30 minutes”.

I am normally very chatty with uber drivers but after doing this for 5 minutes, I conclude that at the speed we are going, I would prefer for him to look forward, concentrate and avoid laughing at all costs. As I contemplate asking him to slow down, I am mentally reminded of one incident when I was on a taxi and a “clever” passenger asked the driver to slow down... let’s just say that didn’t end well so I elect to keep quiet and rather sink into a silent prayer. “Lord please provide some traffic so we can slow down”.

Now getting to Lanseria from home normally takes about 25 minutes but on this special day, we arrive there in 16 minutes. The guy smiles, gets out of the car, helps me to get my bag out of the boot, looks me in the eye and proudly says “We made it Bozza!!” In his mind he has delivered exceptional service while I was traumatised to say the least.

Often when we communicate both in the work environment and in other situations, we are not clear. We throw out some random words which make sense mentally to us but don’t bother to interpret what we need from the recipient of this random information. In my mind, every other driver I have given the time left before boarding has checked the arrival time on his app and driven as normal. This one heard me say “ride or die ”!! The lesson here? When you communicate, be simple and be clear. Don’t leave things to interpretation.

Secondly, when you have communicated and the first few kilometers of execution start off by overtaking 3 cars, have the guts to clarify what you mean. Although I knew that the gentleman was delivering the wrong thing, I kept quiet and suffered the consequences and trauma of doing so. Speak up!!

Did I give him a 5 star rating? Yes absolutely! He delivered on the brief as he understood it and I got excatly what I deserved.

How often do we penalise and blame the people we work with for executing on badly communicated instructions?