shall I have a bit of a wobbly? shall I have bit of a rant? did I take up the time of the girl at the counter with my complaints (like the three people in front of me did)? shall I bore you lovely people with it all? is it her (the girl at the counter) fault that the queue was an hour long because there's only the one post office left since they closed down the other two (the answer to that is "no", by the way)? should she be subject to abuse caused by impatient people who have waited in a very very long very very boring line filled with sniffling pensioners (flu jabs, people! flu jabs! get them. . . they are free!) and screaming children (if your au pair is going to take your toddlers to the post office when she posts her xmas cards to various destinations all over the world, shouldn't she at least have taken a toy or a snack for them? oh! you don't have an au pair! then you probably either don't have a toddler or have a lot more common sense than the average au pair)? is it her (the girl at the counter) fault that there were only three staff on despite their being nine counters? is it her (the girl at the counter) fault that she's from somewhere on the Indian subcontinent and has an accent so thick that NONE OF THE CUSTOMERS could understand a word she was saying and she had to write everything down after repeating it at least three times?
no, no, no and again no
you're spared!
but why, oh why, does it cost far far less to send three small packages of the same total weight as one bigger package. . . or, to put it another way, why does it cost four times as much to send one larger package of the same total weight as the three smaller packages - surely it's easier for the postmen with only the one package to process rather than three. . . and why are there three delivery options - one of which, to quote the girl at the counter, includes "insurance and next day delivery: altho we can't actually guarantee the next day because we don't know what the conditions are the other end" and another of which doesn't actually guarantee any kind of delivery at all (I'm not kidding - of the three options, two tracked en route and have to be signed for and one of which can't be tracked and doesn't have to signed for and she told me that it didn't actually have a delivery guarantee - what's that all about?!) (that was the cheapest option, naturally) ("cheap" not really describing it very accurately) (when I say "quote" I use the word loosely, cos I'm one of the idiots who can't understand English when spoken in a heavy subcontinental Indian accent thru the protective glass of the counter) (it's my problem, not hers - poor lass, she's only doing her job) (she liked it when, at the end of our lengthy transactions, I wished her a good afternoon!)
.
*sigh*
(did I turn back and take the packages home and repack them into multiple smaller packages, only to have to face the queue and the girl at the counter another day? once again, no!)
.
SO, HEY!! THE PACKAGES ARE IN THE POST!!!!
3 comments:
I wrote a sketch , along similar lines, many years ago.
From memory, it was something along the lines of the British always triumphing* because they were masters of the system of queuing.
* The triumph-ing bit involved some galumph-ing.
By the way, are we having a panto this year? I'd rather like to be the Wiki Witch.
the queue was very orderly, but the muttering and tutting and headshaking was dreadful
not sure about a panto, I was thinking of doing a pass-the-parcel. . .
I have had some wonderful conversations in queues. I think that's their best feature.
Hey! You made it! Like I said, you've done a lot better than I have :)
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