Tales of British Bureaucracy....

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Stephen Clarke has a whole series of books dedicated to explaining how different France and French people are from the Brits. In his books he writes in detail about his astonishment at the French lack of customer service and their extensive and tangled bureaucratic processes. Clearly I can never move to France. If the French system is a lot more cumbersome and rude than the British way of doing things, I suspect I would last about a day before blowing a gasket. Sarah and I have spent the last two days dealing with two seeming minor things: getting our mobile phones set up, and dealing with the Bank.

Getting a British bank account set up quickly is apparently a test of will and a feat of strength. We thought we were so smart to get the process started on our last visit here. The accounts were indeed set up - (the new immigrant lowly versions of normal accounts - but nonetheless) the only problem was, like an idiot, I’d forgotten the PIN number sent to me, back at home in Toronto.

Now - admittedly some of my arrogance and frustration comes from the fact that I like to think I have a good understanding of the banking system. That may be so - but only as it applied to the Canadian banking system - which as it turns out is surprisingly quite efficient.
At home, if I forget my PIN I can go over to the nice lady at the bank side counter, she takes my ID and takes me over to a magic PIN machine where I can choose a new secret access number. Simple yes? Not so in Britain apparently. Lack of PIN meant that I needed to “queue” up in the long line and make a deposit through the teller. I haven’t been to a teller since I was a teller, I think. I get up to the counter and politely tell the lady I need to make a deposit. She asks me where my deposit slip is. My what? OK - I don’t have one (I’d thought the deposit slips have gone the way of the typewriter, but nonetheless) - can she fill one out for me? Nope. Presumably this woman must know how to write, seeing as a bank has employed her - but alas apparently not. Back in the queue I go deposit slip in hand. Now after having made a deposit I would like to be taken over to the magic machine that changes my PIN. No dice here either. Apparently the new PIN must be mailed out from head office which takes 4-5 days. So now I have no access to my money for a week….. I see issues ahead.

The phone. I’d set up a temporary pay-as-you go number when I was here last month because without a bank account and a PIN I could not get the phone I wanted initially. Fine. Now I must exchange my pay-as-you go phone for the Blackberry I wanted. With a debit card, cash but no PIN # or proof of address this is a summary of our visit to the CarPhone Warehouse Store:

Total number of minutes spent at the Carphone Warehouse Store: 897
Number of people (guys) it took to serve Sarah and I: 3
Number of calls to customer service: 6
Number of different people it took to answer our questions: 8 (at least)
Number of big nasty ladies behind us in line having a total hissy in front of the whole store about the fact that they too deserved to be served: 1
Number of times the manager of the store had to pay the phone deposit out of his own personal bank account and get refund cash from me: 1
Number of times I had to flirt with the three guys serving us to get where we wanted: countless (I had a choice here: get agro or flirt. I know it’s the cheap way out- but I chose the latter. That might me dirty - but I now have a lovely new working phone. I also have been enlightened by Tuula that the reason that the North American accent works so well with the guys here - is that they only ever watch American porn and that’s what our accents remind them of…… interesting - must remember to use this new found power for good and not evil)

This whole process took one day.

I really should write a book on how North Americans can suppress their efficiency gene in order to be able to live here.

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