Keep smiling

How does one remain positive in the face of adversity? A friend of mine asked me, "when did things come to this?". I have been asking myself the same question since the start of the year, but I don't have an answer for it. I am convinced that I will wake up one day and completely freak out because for right now, it doesn't seem to be sinking in. I say this because I remember one of the stories in school about pranks students played on each other. One that always freaked me out was the prank involving waiting for the prankee to fall asleep especially on the eve of their birthday and carry them in their bed to a strange location, most likely the other side of the school, preferably somewhere dark and deserted. Thankfully, this never happened to me but I always imagined waking up in the middle of the night, disoriented, in a dark, strange place, with no one else around, and assuming it will be outside, to sounds of "creatures of the night". what would I have done? run screaming and crying hysterically back to the dorms most likely, that is if I could sufficiently orient myself to find the right way home.

The most sensible thing to do would be to calm down, figure out where I was, walk calmly and safely back to dorm thereby avoiding clumsy falls and bumps and then find the architects of the prank and make them pay. As I said, thankfully, it never happened to me. That said, what I am experiencing now seems far worse than waking up in a haunted house, it does seem like a pretty bad dream yet I remain strangely hopeful and I'am not sure why. I have been lucky to have enough sensible people around me to tell me it will be all right in the end. In addition to this, I have lived long enough to know that nothing last forever but even with all that, given another time and place, I don't know how I would be handling the situation.

My father used to say that there is nothing that can fall out of the sky that the ground cant handle. I suppose he had a point, I mean after all, the meteor that supposedly killed all the dinosaurs did not destroy the earth, nor did it knock it off its path. In other words, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger? call me sceptical but surely, there is a place between death and strength, a bit of limbo where you are not sure if you want to be dead or run the next marathon.

But despite questioning my unusually sunny disposition, I certainly do not wish it away. there are days and times I do feel down but I allow myself to be cheered up by the little things, a call from a friend, a friendly word from a stranger, a good book or a funny film. Who knows, this meteor that has all but knocked me off course may just have done me a huge favour and killed all my dinosaurs. So here's to a speedy repopulation of planet me :)

Rage against the machine

I went to the bank today, it is a Saturday I know but I had to make a deposit. The branch was due to be open till quite late so I had plenty of time to get there, however, I parked in very expensive, notoriously risky part of town; I had to hurry so as not to get a ticket. I found plenty of parking, in itself quite unusual, pay the meter and rush into the bank. There was the usual bank of automated machines lining the wall. I have used them several times and they do not work for me. Apart from withdrawing cash, they do nothing else. I join the queue of people waiting to be seen by a real/human customer service person. There were 3 people in front of me, not a long wait, or so I thought.

I got in behind the last person and there was the usual customer service staff circling the queuing customers, trying to lure them away from the archaic practice of “Queuing”. Why not use or new automated service, it’s a machine, no idle chit chat, and get your transactions done quicker than speaking to a human (ironically, I thought, these people are talking themselves out of a job because soon, these fancy talking hole's in the wall will replace them all). I refused the offer, I always do, I end up wasting far more time at those machines and preferred to wait in line. Others in the line refused too, they too perhaps were now wise to the non performing robots. We carried on waiting and we seemed to be waiting far longer than seemed necessary. I wonder if the banking tellers were purposely wasting our time so we would start to reconsider using them. I say this because when you eventually get to a teller, they ask you all sorts of ridiculous, inane questions: "I see you are due a financial check up", "would you like to see someone" " no one is available till the next couple of weeks" "should we call you to make an appointment" "is this withdrawal for Christmas presents" and so forth. They have become like double glazing sales people, there is no getting rid of them.

I waited, and waited, watching the clock to make sure that I got out of the bank before my parking ticket expired; I was getting a bit anxious. There was a changing of the guard at the tellers, someone’s shift was over and it took her impossibly long to get off and hand over the reins to someone else. We were down to one teller now and the line had practically stopped moving. Then someone else came on to join the only other teller but instead of serving us customers, she counted money in that money counting machine thing, and shifted papers hither thither. What on earth is going on I wondered. Eventually, after counting the same cash over and again (I am convinced) she was open for business. She signalled to me and I went over to her. By now, the lobby was full of queuing customers and despite repeated calls for us to use the wonder machines, people still queued up as the machines were still not fully functional.

Whist I was eventually being served, I looked over at the other teller. She had just finished with a customer but did not immediately attend to another. I stared at her in sheer frustration to see if she was really making us wait on purpose, she was! For after the last customer left, she appeared to re-arrange her desk; she moved her calculator out of her way, looked at it and readjusted it, then she moved her stapler or something similar, she assessed her handy work and then shifted some papers, stared at her workspace some more, then when there was absolutely nothing left to shift or adjust, she called for the next customer and apologised, yes apologised for the long wait. I didn’t believe it, I was incredulous; had they been ordered to make people wait at the tellers so that we would be encouraged to use the machines. I was disbelieving, surely, they realise that when customers become dependent on these machines, their own jobs will cease to exist, and to be honest, with service like I have received on my last few trips to the bank, that would no big loss.