“Sorry” the woman behind the counter apologised, not sounding apologetic at all.
I looked at her with a quizzical look. What was she pretending to be sorry for? It wasn’t the queue I had waited in for the past two hours.
“Miss, I must tell you that you have waited in the wrong line.”
My heart sunk. “What do you mean?” I stuttered, suddenly hoping that it was April Fool’s day.
“Today, I cannot work on requests regarding A783B12?” She answered, like as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.
“What do you mean with A783B?” I couldn’t remember the remaining numbers.
“A783B12 is the type of query you have. And I only work on those on Mondays and Thursdays, but today we are Tuesday. You have waited in the wrong line!”
“Wait, what!? You must be pulling my leg right?” There was no answer just a big fat fake smile, no compassion. “Are you telling me that I queued for 2 hours for what, for you telling me that I have to come back in two days? I took the afternoon off work to come here.”
“Calm down young lady, or I will have to call security.” She answered violently. “I am not telling you to come back tomorrow, no, you have to get a different number form the computer, look your paper is G25 that’s not the right one. You need to get a paper with a U on it. Just go back to the machine, it will put you into the right queue!”
I glared at her in disbelief. All this waiting for nothing? The assistant at the entrance had asked me a few questions, had a look over my documents and then pressed a big button on a computer that then spat out a ticket.
“Madame, sorry, but I am not the one who pressed the button. Can you not do something for me? I have been here for hours. And as you said, the type of query I have is in your field of competencies, it is just well not the right day.”
“Nope, there is nothing I can do for you, just get into the right queue or come back on a different day.”
On a whim, I decided to join the A to Z Challenge this year. Knowing fairly well that making it would be the biggest challenge. For almost 3 years my blogging has been sporadic, work, kids and life get in the way. Still, I joined. I am lagging behind, and I got kicked off the master list. But I will finish, even if I will be late.
Solveig Werner 
Living in Nicaragua this used to happen a lot. The pure disrespect for lines by customers and staff made me crazy. However, as my Spanish improved so did my ability to debate the issue when inclined. Great post! – Dragons & Spaceships
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Oh no. It has happened a bit to me that I go somewhere with questions and then the person doesn’t have the answers, I sometimes have to explain the thing to them, it can be tough.
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