Dawn

Dawn

Saturday, July 24, 2010

The Spanish government plans to crack down on dangerous drivers. Specifically, they’re going to make it a serious offence to do the sort of tailgating which is a national sport here. As this would create the risk of a significant proportion of the male population ending up in gaol, the intention is to punish the offence with confiscation of the car used. Which makes great sense. But I don’t know why they don’t just seize every Audi and BMW with an engine capacity of more than two litres. This would solve the problem overnight.

There’s naturally been a lot of attention given here to the apparent unifying effect of Spain’s World Cup win. Here’s a good article from Qorreo on the issue of regional versus national identity. Congratulations to all those who read it before moving on and realised ‘less flags’ should have been ‘fewer flags’, a lost battle I continue to fight on behalf of Anglo pedants everywhere.

Talking of flags . . . By pure coincidence, I noticed today that our Club Nautico was showing three on its roof today – the Galician, the Spanish and the EU-ian. This got me wondering about whether young Gallegos convinced of their inviolability would put their lives on the line (other than by going out onto the roads) for the respective entities. Galicia? Probably. Spain? Possibly. Europe? Hmm.

On a lighter note . . . I asked my friend Alfie Mittington whether he was going to contribute to the dialogue on efficiencies and inefficiencies in Spain. His initial reaction was along the lines that he couldn’t see this being much more than a series of personal anecdotes. So he said not. But today he changed his mind and sent me this contribution. Which I leave you with . . .

I subscribe to your opinion, my dear Colin, that where systems or institutions are often callously inefficient – for the customer, that is – personal sympathy of individual employees then frequently compensates for the mess.

Allow me to illustrate the phenomenon with what must be the most brazen example I remember, from a towering heap collected over the decades. I think it happened in the spring of 2002. Being an unhurried traveller, who appreciates the advantages of a train-ride, I made the grave mistake of wanting to take a train from Santiago to Lisbon. You ought to have know better, Al, I hear many folks now sigh. And they are right. In Spain, one takes long-distance buses, which work well. Once does not get closer to RENFE than one absolutely needs to.

But Alfie is an idealist, so off he went at the ungodly hour of 6.30 a.m. and presented himself at the ticket-window of Santiago Central. He was received by an attendant who looked most like an old retirement-desiring postman whose flat feet hurt him even on his barstool, and who deeply hated the world and humanity for Being There and having written so many love-letters which needed delivery. There was no smile. There was no good morning. There was just a cold stare.

So I took out my VISA card and asked the good fellow to sell me a ticket to Lisbon. Note that I had done this before, without any trouble. But the system had changed. And what system there was, was out to lunch.

‘I cannot do that,’ my grumpy clerk told me, leaving the plastic money untouched in the tray. ‘The machine is not turned on. You cannot pay by credit card.’ This was something of an aggravation, because at the time, paying your fare by Visa automatically activated some sort of travel insurance which I did not mind having. There were, however, impatient people waiting behind me, so I did not try the obvious ‘How About Turning Your Machine On?’ but merely raised my eyebrows, pulled my wallet out and told him: ‘Well, in that case, give me a ticket to Lisbon for cash.’
‘I cannot do that,’ he told me as he pushed the VISA card back through the tray. ‘I can only give you a ticket to Vigo. There you must change trains. And you can buy a ticket to Lisbon. You have seven minutes for that.’
‘Oh for God’s sake!’ I exclaimed, remembering the time I bought a one way ticket from Alès to Vladivostok at the train station of Auxèrre-sur-Bloise (which a assure you, readers, is a fifth the size of RENFE Santiago and gets only 167 passengers a year).
But working folks were waiting… And getting impatient. WITH ME!
‘So give me a bloody ticket to Vigo!? I said tersely, as I pushed a 50 Euro bill towards the fellow over the tray.
He looked at me with a blank stare. And I knew what that stare meant. A ticket to Vigo cost 3 or 4 Euros. He did not want to break my 50 Euro banknote.

It was then that I growled, and tried to remember the exact motions of the kick I had learned during Paratrooper training, and which our sergeant-mayor assured us would take bullet-proof glass out of its frame, so that I might pull him over his counter, and do to him what his mother should never have done to his daddy. At 80, however, one no longer does such things lightly. So I merely looked at him like Nessy on a bad day, and vinaigred into his face: ‘Now don’t you give me MORE trouble still…’

And that is where he started giving me lip. He told a paying customer whom he was mistreating that I had no right to abuse him. That he would like to give me a ticket to Lisbon and let me pay by VISA card, but that he was only a worker and following orders and that the Estatut del Trabajador entitled him to…

The train was to leave in 4 minutes. I still had to schlep my suitcase up and down staircases. The crowd behind me was getting restless. It was either take care of this UGT Apparatchnik or get to Lisbon for my date…

So I simply gave him the Mittington Stare. That, and the fact that he had thrown the full Union Manisfesto at me in the verbal way, and the fact that I did not make to evaporate and let him attend Good Customers, finally decided him to accept the 50 Euro bill, and to sell me a ticket to Vigo.

Bad luck, you say? Aaaaahh, we have the same in Britain? Perhaps. But it was Bad Luck with Bad Manners. It was Below Freezing Customer Service with Great Pride at our Asinine Behaviour. In my near 80 years I never had to deal with that in any other country – except, take care now!, in SOVIET republics! – without knowing that I could appeal. Which I knew was futile in a place where the customer is fair game. And that in a place which prides itself on receiving half a million foreign pilgrims a year!

But now for the Good News!

Clutching my one way ticket to Vigo between my lips, I rushed to the platform over staircases and strategically placed brick thresholds (Escalators? Who needs escalators? Old folks and invalids should not travel anyway!). I arrived panting. The train did not. Arrive, I mean. Of a sudden, there was an announcement over the loudspeakers, most politely put – for the benefit of half a million money-spending foreign pilgrims that visit Santiago each summer - in profound AND mechanized Gallego. Forgive me for not getting the drift, ye Galleguistas of the world! I asked for a translation from a student girl standing next to me who explained in remarkably correct English that the Vigo train would leave from platform 7 today. I rushed to platform 7 over staircases and strategically placed brick thresholds. I arrived panting. So did the train. Arrive, I mean. We all boarded. We found seats. We settled in. And then… nothing happened. The minutes passed. More minutes passed. TWENTY minutes passed. The train, as they say, was a little late. Normally that is quite okay for me. But I distinctly remembered my Oblomov Sovietovich Apparatchnik telling me that I had just 7 minutes at Vigo to change trains AFTER buying a ticket! No way I was going to do that, and my octogenarian pace. I was just considering hauling myself out of the train again, and raise All Hell in this City of God, when the train moved. Now what was I to do? I did not want to spend the night in Vigo, but it looked as if I would. And I was just considering getting out at Padron and call one of my co-padrinos who lives nearby to pick me up, when the ticket-checker appeared. She was a sturdy Wagnerian style lady, who probably owed her job to some sort of Ministry of Equality program to get women to work in RENFE. But Bless La Bibiana and her predecesors for that! I explained to her my dilemma. She frowned deeply. She looked at her watch. And she told me she’d call (somehow) to Vigo station, and tell them there were passengers for Oporto on this train who’d arrive late and needed time to secure their tickets.

In Britain, I’d have laughed in her face at the mere idea. Fool around with the train schedule to accommodate half a dozen customers? Getoutahere!

We got to Vigo. We got out. A train was waiting on the opposite platform. Incredulously, I went to the ticket-window. Me and six others were dispatched, faster than I had ever seen, being given pre-printed tickets to Oporto. That train, that steaming, impatient train on platform 2, it was still there as I paid. It was still there as I rushed out the building. It was still there when I put my old foot on the steps and hauled my old frame to the safety of travel… I turned around. There, across the other platform, was my Brunhilde who owed her job to the Equality Program. She waved. I waved back. I even blew her a kiss. And I seriously considered stepping down again, and asking her to marry me.

But then, I figured that there must be a clause in the Estatut de los Trabajadores which categorically forbids Employees to marry Customers (those mud stains on the gene-pool). So I went to Lisbon instead, to sing Fados with an old girlfriend from my days in the Revoluciaoao das Claveles (or however the Lusitanians spell their history).

Efficiency? There you have Spanish efficiency, my dear Colin. And – of course – Portuguese, Italian, Southern French, and more such countries who take their cues from Ancient Rome. It works because of personal sympathy of some. Which compensates for the below-zero planning, foresight and uppity attitudes towards customers of others.

Daily it surprises me that the place keeps afloat!

ABM 

Editor’s note: I must say my own experiences with RENFE are rather happier. Perhaps I have a nicer face than Alfie's.

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