Today was the culmination of three frustrating weeks of attemptng to renew three motor vehicle licences under the new system introduced by the City of Cape Town - who knows why - I think it is designed to bring out the worst in everyone who is now subjected to mountains of bureaucratic red tape at a time when the world needs to abolish such meaningless hogwash. No money-laundering scheme, child trafficking or terrorist incident is ever going to be prevented by my providing any institution with my proof of address. If I want to live under an unidentified rock in the wilderness they have no right to deny me renewal of my car licence. However...
Any irritation I may have felt or voiced on arrival at the municipal offices, where the queue wound around the contours of the building and the elderly needed to have seats provided for them, soon paled into insignificance with the performance of the woman in front of me. Having spent an hour letting us know she had just been to London to attend to passport matters (British), she then took it upon herself to let us all know that a young girl at one of the three counters had a pile of documents and was obviously attending to renewal on behalf of a number of people. She considered that a supervisor should be called to observe the clerks at work and demanded names and phone numbers of anyone in a senior position. We were then treated to a loud and officious phone call to some unfortunate individual in a back office who declined to put in an appearance and sensibly did not take any further calls.
Just when we thought it couldn't get any more cringeworthy, she rushed over to a young man who had gone to the counter without her having observed him in the line - I thought she was going to assault him, but the tongue lashing she gave him nearly drew blood. Turns out she was entirely mistaken, but uncowed. After two and a half hours, we finally had our turns at the windows. She had a document missing, and you should have heard the grovelling - talk about an about-face!
I did suggest to her that such events are sent to enable us to show the world who we really are - she assured me that she did yoga and meditated but still wanted to hit someone. I didn't tell her that her histrionics had enabled me to view the entire process in a different light and that I had become quite relaxed despite the long wait!
Heaven forbid that I should embarrass myself through such behaviour or belittle others so publicly.
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