The beauty of letters!

I do not know why but every year on Valentine's Day I think about fond couples and their communication in the past and nowadays.
In the present it is so easy to get hold on with somebody. According the research there is about 2.7 billion users of mobile phones and 1.3 billions of fixed land lines worldwide. http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2007/01/putting_27_bill.html
Most of the population have got even 2 or 3 mobiles which are useless. As the competition between mobile operators is big, the prices are cheaper and retailers try to offer better and better deals for consumers.
Using of mobiles is very useful in term of contact someone in a quick way and save time. But since this new technology become available I really miss letters from my relatives, friends and people who love me. The excitement of waiting days and weeks (depending on the distance) and looking every day into the post box for the letter has gone away with using mobiles. The letters are replaced by messages and as they have certain limit of letters to include in one message I do very often end up with missing the most important information. Or sometimes I have to send more messages to say everything what I need and therefore spend more money on credit as I can. There are about 30 billions of messages exchanged worldwide. (http://watchtower.org/e/20050208b/article_01.htm)
The other negative of it is using of abbreviations. To include as much as possible and save as much space as possible force people write abbreviations There is a little example:‘'Enrte Cu in 10 min' (which means 'am enroute to venue, will see you in 10 minutes') is a typical message sent by Devika Prabhu of SET India Pvt Ltd, who is an avid SMS user. http://www.rediff.com/netguide/2003/jun/13english.htm
And you would be very surprise about its negative influence to youngsters and their spelling habits.
I am not against mobile phone I agree that it is inseparable part even of my life but people should not forget about beauty of letters from friends and I feel that it is a shame that this type of informal communication decreasing and becoming old fashionable.

Quick service = Satisfied customer

I work once a week in the bar where we have to serve food during whole day. There is a special selected bar menu due to the restaurant which is open only for the breakfast and dinner.
But lets talk about the communication between the bar and the kitchen.
When we do an order we have to type it on our till and the message is sent automatically through to the kitchen. If customer has special requirements we can just add the kitchen message and chefs know all the details.
This type of communication is really very clever and helpful especially during the busy period.
It saves our time and also legs because otherwise we would have to walk all the way to the kitchen and back. On the other side when communication breaks down, for example if the computer is broken and the bar is very busy we are really stack. We have to write the orders on the paper twice. One copy goes to the kitchen and the other one is for the staff. We have to keep that to know who ordered what and do not mix up our orders. In those situation I just think how technology is powerful and very helpful.
When I was on holiday in Ibiza I went to the restaurant where I noticed their type of communication between waitress and kitchen. They had a little digital boxes which looked like calculators and when we ordered some meals they type the number and kitchen message. That looked very professional and easily operated. They just stick their little machine in their pocket and then could take some dirty plates on the way back to the kitchen. I do not want to say that we should use the same techniques because in the bar people usually come to the desk so we do not have to walk from one table to another. It is just a nice example how to make the communication quicker between two departments.
Life is so easy and we just have find the way to make it so.

Communication between head of departments

I have been working in hotel industry for 2 and half years. As I would like a career in this industry I have noticed some interesting methods, that are used by management, to communicate between departments.

One is about using "pigeon holes" which are situated in the managers office. Messages and other information in paper format are left in each department's section. Sometimes the "holes" are full of papers especially when the head of the department is on holiday or during the busy period. That may cause information being lost as they might drop on the floor and no one knows whose piece of paper is which. Also printing a lot of letters is sometimes wasting of our source -wood.(But that is an environmental issue)

Therefore I find the idea of using electronic post very essential, useful and even clever. First I thought about e-mailing information from one department to another as useless. But then I realise that this form of exchanging information helps not loose any information and saves time by walking from upstairs to downstairs or opposite and it also saves paper. Even a short information is exchange by e-mail. Before I thought why managers do not say information in personal communication. But then I understood that work in hotel is very fast and busy. E-mail communication helps to make easier work and saves time.

Some people might argue that it may cause a lack of real communication with human beings. But I would say that in this particular type of work it is different. If the hotel managers on each department have to deal with hundreds of people every day so we can not talk about lack of communication in real situation.

In my opinion it is very clever way of communication in a busy type of business.