A thoroughly depressing wet Monday was made even more depressing by my loss of a non-contact period to take a lesson for a colleague who has been absent for almost two weeks. I ground my teeth in impotent frustration at the sheer unprofessionalism of the place in which I work. There is no point in making a fuss because people moan and do nothing and I know more surely than VAT is an evil unfair tax that if I said anything then the support of those people most vociferous for change would melt away like the snows of Kilimanjaro.
This feeling of cynical world weariness continued for some hours and was not mitigated by the baseless self-satisfaction of the deluded kids I attempt to teach.
Then it started to snow.
I hate snow with a visceral hatred. Yes, I do have a child-like thrill every time I see the falling flakes and I have an ooh-aah response to landscapes coated in white and yes, I do relish that particular form of silence that comes with snow and I like the crisp crunch of stepping through virgin layers of the white stuff – but in a city in which you have to move and live it is truly loathsome.
The kids were of course hysterical and un-teachable even though the stuff was not settling. By lunch time the snow had formed a slush which to my expert eye was going to provide some sort of base for settling snow. And so it proved with picture postcard settings around the school and the hysteria of the kids reaching new levels of absurdity.
With the settling snow came concern about the kids and staff getting home, not, of course that that meant that school was truncated by a single solitary second. So, with the snow getting ever thicker I, at last I made my way through the accumulating drifts to my car.
Thoughtfully parked at the lowest point of the school perimeter my car looked more like an igloo than a form of transport. Dashing the snow from windows and lights I started the more than perilous journey down our one in one road approaches to the school. Sliding decorously towards the traffic lights, the curb luckily stopped my precipitous flight from education.
The slip road to the motorway home was closed so I had to take an alternate route.
I am not, it has to be admitted, good at traffic jams. I am even less good at traffic jams in driving snow. I will not dwell on the horrors (as horrors there were) on the drive home. Suffice to say that lurching about on an almost deserted motorway with the sickening realization that everybody else was going the other way; being stuck in stopped and slow moving traffic for one and half bloody hours and . . . well you get the idea. I was not a happy little underpaid professional when I finally arrived home. And Castelldefels was, of course, completely devoid of snow.
Just to confirm how I felt I rather foolishly took my blood pressure (because, thanks to Boots the Chemist, I can) and it was the wrong side of whatever it is that I can convince myself is almost acceptable.
Then, just as life was quickly becoming intolerable there was a little musical beep and an email informing me that school was closed tomorrow.
Irritatingly Toni asked who had sent it; to which I replied with colloquial wit and incisiveness words enough to convey the impression that I was not really that much concerned about the verity of the message and was inclined to accept as gospel anything which chimed in with my inclinations so exactly.
It also gives me the opportunity to visit the Worst Bank in the World aka BBVA and beard the unresponsive, arrogant, unprofessional and just plain not nice people who refuse to refund me my money.
It should be an interesting situation!
This feeling of cynical world weariness continued for some hours and was not mitigated by the baseless self-satisfaction of the deluded kids I attempt to teach.
Then it started to snow.
I hate snow with a visceral hatred. Yes, I do have a child-like thrill every time I see the falling flakes and I have an ooh-aah response to landscapes coated in white and yes, I do relish that particular form of silence that comes with snow and I like the crisp crunch of stepping through virgin layers of the white stuff – but in a city in which you have to move and live it is truly loathsome.
The kids were of course hysterical and un-teachable even though the stuff was not settling. By lunch time the snow had formed a slush which to my expert eye was going to provide some sort of base for settling snow. And so it proved with picture postcard settings around the school and the hysteria of the kids reaching new levels of absurdity.
With the settling snow came concern about the kids and staff getting home, not, of course that that meant that school was truncated by a single solitary second. So, with the snow getting ever thicker I, at last I made my way through the accumulating drifts to my car.
Thoughtfully parked at the lowest point of the school perimeter my car looked more like an igloo than a form of transport. Dashing the snow from windows and lights I started the more than perilous journey down our one in one road approaches to the school. Sliding decorously towards the traffic lights, the curb luckily stopped my precipitous flight from education.
The slip road to the motorway home was closed so I had to take an alternate route.
I am not, it has to be admitted, good at traffic jams. I am even less good at traffic jams in driving snow. I will not dwell on the horrors (as horrors there were) on the drive home. Suffice to say that lurching about on an almost deserted motorway with the sickening realization that everybody else was going the other way; being stuck in stopped and slow moving traffic for one and half bloody hours and . . . well you get the idea. I was not a happy little underpaid professional when I finally arrived home. And Castelldefels was, of course, completely devoid of snow.
Just to confirm how I felt I rather foolishly took my blood pressure (because, thanks to Boots the Chemist, I can) and it was the wrong side of whatever it is that I can convince myself is almost acceptable.
Then, just as life was quickly becoming intolerable there was a little musical beep and an email informing me that school was closed tomorrow.
Irritatingly Toni asked who had sent it; to which I replied with colloquial wit and incisiveness words enough to convey the impression that I was not really that much concerned about the verity of the message and was inclined to accept as gospel anything which chimed in with my inclinations so exactly.
It also gives me the opportunity to visit the Worst Bank in the World aka BBVA and beard the unresponsive, arrogant, unprofessional and just plain not nice people who refuse to refund me my money.
It should be an interesting situation!
How are the mighty fallen!
Let’s face it, a day off school starts on a positive note. If the reason for your being at home is snow and where you lived is bathed in delightful sunshine, then it simply gets better and better.
It was with growing excitement and anticipation that, armed with my trusty interpreter, I approached the office of the manager of the Worst Bank in the World aka BBVA. After a brief wait outside her office we were ushered in and, lo and behold! She knew all about the case! She had attempted to contact me by mobile phone and by e-mail! Amazingly none of her attempts to contact me by phone and by email was successful! Truly amazing! There is, of course, another, simpler explanation for this lack of communication by a bank proven to be incompetent to the point of caricature ; but I was far too much of a gentleman to voice what went through my head!
After much discussion and explanation (and blaming of the Terrassa branch of The Worst Bank in the World) we eventually came to some sort of conclusion about what money I was owed. The final calculations were involved, to put it mildly, and anyone would think that we were discussing the national debt of a country like Greece rather than the couple of hundred Euros I was trying to prise out of the grasping rapacious talons of BBVA!
As is the way of banks there was a short, shocked discussion about whether I should return at some later date to pick up an odd €12 that was owed to me apart from the bulk of the rest of the money I was to be given and could not for various reasons be paid in cash at that time. Toni did not bother to translate that bit and insisted that I wanted to close the account immediately with all monies given to be immediately, if not sooner.
After a bit of coming and going the manager gave me cash (not that much!) and a paper to sign which indicated that my account was cancelled. I was, at long last, free of the pernicious mockery of a financial institution that had been sucking my money into its every open maw.
With a form of words which is surely counter intuitive for any banker she said, “I’m sorry!” as I left! If her professional (I use the word loosely) association were ever to discover what she blurted out she would be expelled from the Noble Order of Financial Incompetents for blasphemy!
I am not a trusting soul when it comes to my ex-bank and as I had my bank book with me I decided to find out if it still worked in the machine and try to discover exactly when this dispute was “sorted out.”
The book still worked in the hole-in-the-wall and I found out that some money had been paid in last Thursday. The wrong amount admittedly, but at least some money was paid in. A month to the day when I took time off school to go on and sort things out for the first time and left a letter for them to work on. It wasn’t really rocket science: they had charged me for an account which I didn’t have and they needed to repay me. It was clear in my account. There was no discussion. I shudder to think how long it would have taken if they had been an element of doubt about their own inefficiency and ineptitude!
There was evidence of a flurry of activity today in my bank book as they had magicked up the money to pay me while I was sitting waiting in the manager’s office, but in their haste to settle everything they had left some of their money in my account! Active money in an account that was supposed to have been cancelled. An account which didn’t, as far as the bank was concerned, exist.
So, having just signed a paper which informed me that my account had been cancelled I felt no compunction whatsoever in taking €50 from the account as the money was obviously a little gift to me for all my trouble and wasn’t in any way real as far as the bank was concerned! The crisp note emerged and was pocketed as soon as daylight hit it!
In a sorry history of my dealings with this apology for a banking outfit which would have been drummed out of Toytown for lack of credibility, the €50 was the single success story. And we had a pastry and a coffee on the strength of it. And later an excellent menu del dia in one of our old haunts. All courtesy of BBVA and the magic note!
Today was one of those days which, for teachers, usually occur at the start of the holidays. A day when there is time to get things done. These are all the little things which are difficult or impossible to resolve when stuck all day in school and which are suddenly and easily sorted out when there is a spacious day in which to settle old, half forgotten tasks. As settled they were with a whole check list of little jobs all ticked off!
School tomorrow is going to be something of an anticlimax.
Again.
Let’s face it, a day off school starts on a positive note. If the reason for your being at home is snow and where you lived is bathed in delightful sunshine, then it simply gets better and better.
It was with growing excitement and anticipation that, armed with my trusty interpreter, I approached the office of the manager of the Worst Bank in the World aka BBVA. After a brief wait outside her office we were ushered in and, lo and behold! She knew all about the case! She had attempted to contact me by mobile phone and by e-mail! Amazingly none of her attempts to contact me by phone and by email was successful! Truly amazing! There is, of course, another, simpler explanation for this lack of communication by a bank proven to be incompetent to the point of caricature ; but I was far too much of a gentleman to voice what went through my head!
After much discussion and explanation (and blaming of the Terrassa branch of The Worst Bank in the World) we eventually came to some sort of conclusion about what money I was owed. The final calculations were involved, to put it mildly, and anyone would think that we were discussing the national debt of a country like Greece rather than the couple of hundred Euros I was trying to prise out of the grasping rapacious talons of BBVA!
As is the way of banks there was a short, shocked discussion about whether I should return at some later date to pick up an odd €12 that was owed to me apart from the bulk of the rest of the money I was to be given and could not for various reasons be paid in cash at that time. Toni did not bother to translate that bit and insisted that I wanted to close the account immediately with all monies given to be immediately, if not sooner.
After a bit of coming and going the manager gave me cash (not that much!) and a paper to sign which indicated that my account was cancelled. I was, at long last, free of the pernicious mockery of a financial institution that had been sucking my money into its every open maw.
With a form of words which is surely counter intuitive for any banker she said, “I’m sorry!” as I left! If her professional (I use the word loosely) association were ever to discover what she blurted out she would be expelled from the Noble Order of Financial Incompetents for blasphemy!
I am not a trusting soul when it comes to my ex-bank and as I had my bank book with me I decided to find out if it still worked in the machine and try to discover exactly when this dispute was “sorted out.”
The book still worked in the hole-in-the-wall and I found out that some money had been paid in last Thursday. The wrong amount admittedly, but at least some money was paid in. A month to the day when I took time off school to go on and sort things out for the first time and left a letter for them to work on. It wasn’t really rocket science: they had charged me for an account which I didn’t have and they needed to repay me. It was clear in my account. There was no discussion. I shudder to think how long it would have taken if they had been an element of doubt about their own inefficiency and ineptitude!
There was evidence of a flurry of activity today in my bank book as they had magicked up the money to pay me while I was sitting waiting in the manager’s office, but in their haste to settle everything they had left some of their money in my account! Active money in an account that was supposed to have been cancelled. An account which didn’t, as far as the bank was concerned, exist.
So, having just signed a paper which informed me that my account had been cancelled I felt no compunction whatsoever in taking €50 from the account as the money was obviously a little gift to me for all my trouble and wasn’t in any way real as far as the bank was concerned! The crisp note emerged and was pocketed as soon as daylight hit it!
In a sorry history of my dealings with this apology for a banking outfit which would have been drummed out of Toytown for lack of credibility, the €50 was the single success story. And we had a pastry and a coffee on the strength of it. And later an excellent menu del dia in one of our old haunts. All courtesy of BBVA and the magic note!
Today was one of those days which, for teachers, usually occur at the start of the holidays. A day when there is time to get things done. These are all the little things which are difficult or impossible to resolve when stuck all day in school and which are suddenly and easily sorted out when there is a spacious day in which to settle old, half forgotten tasks. As settled they were with a whole check list of little jobs all ticked off!
School tomorrow is going to be something of an anticlimax.
Again.
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