Just when you thought it was impossible to lavish any more hatred and loathing on an institution that ranks lower than the dirt under the fingernails of Robert Mugabe, you are surprised by what Gogol called the ‘lower depths’ of unsuspected idiocy that some institutions can plumb.
Not, for once, my inestimable previous school, but my worthless bank!
BBVA has done it again! Unthinking, complacent, inefficient, grasping, customer loathing, money machine!
Going to Sitges every day you are faced with a choice: do you risk the coast road with its wonderful views, vertiginous drops, convoluted roads and suicidal drivers wanting to overtake on blind S-bends, or do you take the boring but safe alternative of the tunnels? One is free and dangerous and the other is safer and expensive.
For most of the time I took the tunnels.
As you pass through the toll booths you notice that two lanes have bright blue roads and the toll barriers rise automatically at the approach of cars. I eventually learned that my way of payment for the tolls was the second most expensive. I used my bank card and I was informed that every so many of my trips would be free. This was good, but I was also told that there was the Blue Road Way. This was the cheapest way of all and required the possession of a small machine which sent out some sort of signal and set you apart not only from the hoi polloi who used actual money to pay, but also from the parvenus who used mere bank cards.
I asked my bank and filled in the numerous forms to get a machine to take me into the ranks of the chosen. I was informed that it would take days.
Needless to say it didn’t and weeks passed with no card. Telephone calls did not produce the card and I was reduced to shredding small cambric handkerchiefs in my frustration.
No longer needing the card I went into the bank with the documentation that I had signed and asked plaintively what had happened.
The machine, in an envelope with my name and address on the front has been in the bank in Castelldefels since the middle of March.
God rot BBVA. Alas! My Spanish is insufficient to do full justice to the fury that I felt but, with limited vocabulary and few verbs I did the best that I could. I pointed out with robust vigour that I had been paying €10 a day for months while they had the padded envelope waiting under the counter. I did note one bleating response from the frankly startled BBVA serf who attempted to placate me: “We are not a post office!” This is the same sort of contemptible remark that the medical centre made when stating that they couldn’t make a photocopy of my passport (which they had asked for) because “We are not a photocopying shop!” God rot the pair of them.
My visit to the employment centre in Gavá was no less frustrating. I am a month short of the necessary employment days to qualify for any sort of support from the Spanish state. I can’t say that I was expecting any, though it did pass my mind that if The Owner had paid me until the end of the academic year I would easily have qualified. Another crime to lay at her door!
Talking of justice: I have drafted my letter to the powers that be about the abuses that have gone on in my ex-school. Any situation that encourages me to use such expressions as ‘autocratic rule by edict,’ ‘attitudinal malaise’ and ‘Catch-22’ in a letter has got to be worth reading about!
Meanwhile the Spanish football team have made it through to the final of the European Cup. The girls and I watched this while having our evening meal in a restaurant at the end of the road. The volume of the televisions precluded any meaningful conversation and we had the added dislocation of discovering that though the match was being relayed live, some televisions were more live than others.
Our restaurant had what I think is a terrestrial station broadcasting the match, while the restaurant next door had a satellite link. This meant that the television next door was a few seconds ahead of us so we were easily able to tell if a promising move by Spanish players amounted to anything!
The girls were subdued. Their intensive sun bathing has exhausted them and they want a respite tomorrow and are prepared to reject the sunny sand and go instead to the restrained Ramblas in Barcelona for a gentle walk and shop.
Bring it on!
Not, for once, my inestimable previous school, but my worthless bank!
BBVA has done it again! Unthinking, complacent, inefficient, grasping, customer loathing, money machine!
Going to Sitges every day you are faced with a choice: do you risk the coast road with its wonderful views, vertiginous drops, convoluted roads and suicidal drivers wanting to overtake on blind S-bends, or do you take the boring but safe alternative of the tunnels? One is free and dangerous and the other is safer and expensive.
For most of the time I took the tunnels.
As you pass through the toll booths you notice that two lanes have bright blue roads and the toll barriers rise automatically at the approach of cars. I eventually learned that my way of payment for the tolls was the second most expensive. I used my bank card and I was informed that every so many of my trips would be free. This was good, but I was also told that there was the Blue Road Way. This was the cheapest way of all and required the possession of a small machine which sent out some sort of signal and set you apart not only from the hoi polloi who used actual money to pay, but also from the parvenus who used mere bank cards.
I asked my bank and filled in the numerous forms to get a machine to take me into the ranks of the chosen. I was informed that it would take days.
Needless to say it didn’t and weeks passed with no card. Telephone calls did not produce the card and I was reduced to shredding small cambric handkerchiefs in my frustration.
No longer needing the card I went into the bank with the documentation that I had signed and asked plaintively what had happened.
The machine, in an envelope with my name and address on the front has been in the bank in Castelldefels since the middle of March.
God rot BBVA. Alas! My Spanish is insufficient to do full justice to the fury that I felt but, with limited vocabulary and few verbs I did the best that I could. I pointed out with robust vigour that I had been paying €10 a day for months while they had the padded envelope waiting under the counter. I did note one bleating response from the frankly startled BBVA serf who attempted to placate me: “We are not a post office!” This is the same sort of contemptible remark that the medical centre made when stating that they couldn’t make a photocopy of my passport (which they had asked for) because “We are not a photocopying shop!” God rot the pair of them.
My visit to the employment centre in Gavá was no less frustrating. I am a month short of the necessary employment days to qualify for any sort of support from the Spanish state. I can’t say that I was expecting any, though it did pass my mind that if The Owner had paid me until the end of the academic year I would easily have qualified. Another crime to lay at her door!
Talking of justice: I have drafted my letter to the powers that be about the abuses that have gone on in my ex-school. Any situation that encourages me to use such expressions as ‘autocratic rule by edict,’ ‘attitudinal malaise’ and ‘Catch-22’ in a letter has got to be worth reading about!
Meanwhile the Spanish football team have made it through to the final of the European Cup. The girls and I watched this while having our evening meal in a restaurant at the end of the road. The volume of the televisions precluded any meaningful conversation and we had the added dislocation of discovering that though the match was being relayed live, some televisions were more live than others.
Our restaurant had what I think is a terrestrial station broadcasting the match, while the restaurant next door had a satellite link. This meant that the television next door was a few seconds ahead of us so we were easily able to tell if a promising move by Spanish players amounted to anything!
The girls were subdued. Their intensive sun bathing has exhausted them and they want a respite tomorrow and are prepared to reject the sunny sand and go instead to the restrained Ramblas in Barcelona for a gentle walk and shop.
Bring it on!
No comments:
Post a Comment