A Day in the Life …

You get up of a morning, perfectly innocently expecting the day to roll along in a normal, hassle-free fashion, and look what happens!

I got to work late, having reorganised my usual timetable in favour of a meeting scheduled to start at the end of the working day, only to receive a call several minutes after I arrived, asking if we could move the meeting forward. That was fine, as it was a meeting I was looking forward to anyway … though I did mildly lament the death-nell it dealt to my admin for the day.

So Beloved Serf and I sallied forth, to cross the trackless wastes between Elephant and Castle and Sydenham Hill.

Beloved Serf wasn’t sure whether her travel card would do the honours ticket-wise, so we queued for the ticket kiosk. When it came to our turn, BS asked which zone Sydenham Hill might be found in … only to be told, somewhat brusquely by the lady behind the counter, to look it up on the map!

I was appalled, but BS is a polite and patient type, so she dutifully consulted the map which had been thrust upon her, even though it meant losing her place in the queue.

She did need a ticket, so we queued (again!), and got to the front.

It seems we were not a welcome sight to the dear soul behind the counter. First she got narked by the fact that BS did in fact need a return, not just a single. Then, when it came to pay, she asked if I was paying by cash. Cash being on the sparse side in my purse, I said I was going to pay by card, and got to work finding my way around the Chip & Pin machine.

No sooner had I inserted my card than she called to me:

“Can you do it quickly please!”

I asked her to repeat herself. I mean, I’m British, so I naturally assumed she was being polite in some very subtle way which I had entirely missed the first time round.

“Can you do it quickly please because I want to close up!”

Oh no … there was no politeness after all. There was just stunning impoliteness! Not only was she topping her own personal best at rudeness to the customer by rushing someone in the process of making a financial transaction (something we all deserve to be able to do with care and due attention), but she was more specifically hassling a blind person to rush said transaction! Now, it’s not that I’m after particularly special treatment or anything, but take into account the minor fact that almost no Chip & Pin machine is in any way accessible if you can’t see, so we are obliged to rely on a mixture of sighted assistance and informed guesswork to get the job done … and suddenly her asking me to ‘do it quickly’ takes on new layers of affrontery!

Having inherited my mum’s dislike of poor customer service, I stopped what I was doing, and said in a ‘carrying’ kind of voice:

“I’m blind, so doing things quickly isn’t always particularly easy!”

Suffice to say, she was unapologetic. Our little interchange finished with me remarking that:

“Customer service is a beautiful thing, isn’t it”

… to the forecourt at large.

We did, in the end, arrive safely at our destination. Our meeting was at The Salvation Army’s International College for Officers, which is a beautiful manor house type building, with impressive architecture, and the interior decor to match the olde worlde theme.

Tea and coffee were served, as was a nicely-arranged plate of biscuits. We worked our way through a very inspiring couple of hours, not to mention a couple of biscuits too.
As we said our final thanks and goodbyes, Hugo suddenly leapt up, spun round and stole a biscuit from the plate!

Our host was gracious in the face of Hugo’s mortifying behaviour, and we left without too much shame pinned to our names!

We decided to salve the trama from our souls by a trip to Ask for dinner. It was a very good meal, though we were being served by one of those waitresses who insists on pronouncing all the Italian names in the proper, full-on accent after you’ve given her the English version of what you want. Still, being a linguist, I would have to be grateful she wasn’t a non-Italian person pretending to be able to pronounce the names in an authentic way.

Having been left feeling a little overawed by her flawless pronunciation of the various Italian elements of the venue, however, we did finally get our moment of glory when she came to read the list of English teas, and offered us ‘Erli Grey’, in the broadest Italian accent this side of Florence!

… but enough of this rambling. I must away to bed!

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