journal features

doing things the dad way

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2020.01.21

When I was young I always marveled at my father's ability to get things done by refusing to make someone else's problem his own. I've been putting into practice myself these days.

On Friday I woke in the middle of the night with the realization that I had likely missed a deadline on filing a CPP payment to the benevolent CRA. This would be my second instance of such a missed deadline and the fine would come to 20%. I wrote to my accountant (at 2:30 in the morning) and sure enough, it had been due Wednesday. So I called the accountant and expressed my dismay and asked how I was meant to know how much or when the payment was due. She agreed, and asked me to come in. We went over what she'd provided and she found a variety of problems with what she'd given me "as estimates!" She then relented and said that she'd cover the fines. In this, I was doing something that my dad had always demonstrated: get any and all counter-parties involved and say "I'm not happy" until someone steps up.

Then on Monday this week (yesterday) I called our cell phone provider to ask where was the replacement SIM card I'd ordered back on the 10th. It turned out that those rascals at Purolator had decided that being presented with a single door and single buzzer when they came to our walk-up meant that we hadn't put a sufficient address on it "because it didn't have an apartment number". Purolator had finally sent the SIM back to our cell provider's place in Burnaby that morning. So I rang up the cell company again and once again kept saying "I'm not happy" and then dad's final gambit of casually asking, "Say, what is the cost of leaving our contract?" At the end I had a new SIM coming "overnight by Canada Post" (sic) and for free: a $30 saving over the original failed delivery. It cost me a week's use of my phone, but the provider is now paying for my having lost the old SIM in Haneda airport.

So, thanks for the training dad!

rand()m quote

One day you will take a fork in the road, and you're going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go one way, you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and get good assignments. Or you can go the other way and you can do something [...] for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and get good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you have to make a decision. To be or to do.

—John Boyd, US Air Force