The first batch of tags was quickly snapped up by those willing to help. We ran out quickly so, as the subs needed them I would e-mail the SA and reserve an appropriate number to cover the gap.
Then the phone calls and emails started coming in. There were problems.
Some tags had incomplete data. Some were mostly blank. Some had what looked like girls names but boys clothing info or vice versa. Some had sizes that were clearly outside the range of what was realistic for children of the age on the card. Phone calls and emails to the SA to help deal with these issues were only sporadically answered, and, with the exception of a single problem tag that had an issue that was resolved through e-mail, the answer was “bring in the tags with problems and we will replace them”.
After the initial batch of fifteen tags, I would reserve five to ten tags at a time as to not inadvertently bite off more than I could chew and accidentally remove a child from the selection process by a clumsy overestimation on my part. Each batch I picked up had at least one tag that needed to be returned.
Eventually, I was allowed to come in, rifle through the remaining, non-reserved tags for ones whose data was both complete and reasonable. When I asked if they needed the codes off the tags they shrugged and said “no”. I was shocked. No one at the SA monitored which cards I took from the “master pile”!
At this point in the process minimal trackability became zero accountability. Up until this point, I thought that my name was somehow tied to the codes on the cards so I would be responsible for a) returning them attached to filled gift requests sometime in the future or b) explaining why the tags I took were not returned attached to filled gift requests.
For the record, I would have never allowed “b” to happen. My view is that as soon as I take the tags, it is not “someone else’s problem” if a person asks one of the subs for a tag and does not deliver on the implied promise to return with gifts later - it’s mine. One of the people that missed the “deadline” was unreachable by e-mail or phone. We were steamed, but a sub and I chipped in to cover the tag.
In any case, by the end of this phase 46 tags were procured from the SA, of which 39 had valid or at least correctable information on them. The 39 valid tag orders were filled but the other seven had to be returned.
That’s a fifteen percent error rate.
You may be thinking that fifteen percent is not a big deal, especially when the problem tags are returned and, presumably, corrected. But that’s just it. The problem tags are probably not returned and corrected. These tags are distributed throughout the malls and shopping centers of at least seven local cities. As I mentioned before questions via email or phone are most likely going to go unanswered and very few people will drive all the way to the SA from wherever they are to trade a tag. The problems may not be noticed at all - less obvious errors may be ignored, resulting in the wrong size or gender clothing being purchased by the well-meaning donor. Major problems might result in the tag being discarded altogether.
I could type all day and not run out of ways by which a tag could be sent out into the world, never to return.
It’s an admittedly small sample size but some general statements can probably be safely inferred from my experience with the 46 tags I was “in charge of”. To sum up, seven tags were unusable, one had an error that was correctable, one tag was lost and two people failed to make the deadline. Assuming that eleven out of every 46 tags in the loop were affected in these simple ways, one quarter of all children in the program (between 2,250 and 7,500 of them, depending on your source) were affected somehow through the incompetence of others.
Based on the other failure mechanisms I can come up with but did not actually witness, I can see 25% as a probably very low estimate.
So far I got to see the beginning and middle of this process. There was no way I was not going to see how this story ended so I signed up for a four-hour shift at the distribution center to help pass out the items that were collected so far.
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