"The art of queuing
What a daft day! We were collected from the very pleasant and helpful hotel Faircity Quatermain at 6.30 and whisked to the airport in half the time it took the other day, arriving just before 7. We queued hardly at all it must be said to check in and went to get our VAT receipts validated so we could get a refund after boarder control. We queued there for several minutes and then decided we would get some Mauritius rupees so we queued at the ABSA bank to be told that they don't do foreign exchange. So we queued at one of the foreign exchange places to be told we had to get Rand in cash to exchange. That was logical, I confess, so we went back to the ABSA and, to avoid queuing we used the ATM. We went back and queued to get our remaining Rand, and the extra we'd withdrawn, exchanged for rupees. That took time, requiring passport to be copied, boarding pass checked, various pieces of paper signed, etc. Eventually we got the million million rupees and went to queue to get thorough security.
That was a long queue, occasionally and irritatingly queue jumped by random people who seemed not to have to queue. But never fear, that long queue served to shorten the queue to go through immigration. But queue we did and, once through, we went to queue to get the tax refund on our purchases in South Africa. This also required my passport to be copied, boarding pass validated, various papers signed.... you get the pattern. But I also had my finger print taken this time, all for far less than we anticipated because several of our purchases were made in Swaziland and didn't qualify for refund of tax. We're now claiming back about £15 but it's better than a slap in the belly with a wet kipper.
Cheque finally in hand, with a vague instruction to get it cashed "downstairs", we searched for a NEDBANK because that's what it had on the cheque but there isn't one in the airport we discovered. Now seething we headed back to the refund desk for me to get something off my chest. No queuing this time! Oh no. "What am I supposed to do with this, pray," I enquired of the woman who served us. "There's no NEDBANK in the airport," I helpfully informed her. She explained that she had never said it had to be NEDBANK but the bank just underneath the very place in which she worked would cash it.
That turned out to be a foreign exchange place I think so we queued to collect our fortune. Passport copied again, boarding pass checked. Is this becoming repetitive? We have been in the airport now for an hour and forty five minutes and all we have done is queue, had my passport photocopied five times, my boarding pass checked six times, signed something six times and had my finger print taken, all to collect fifteen quid and get on a plane.
"It will be 185 Rand after deduction of the fee." That is just what I needed. An anger-inducing farce now became genuinely funny. Our reward for almost two hours queuing amounted to about £8 which we now had no time to spend! We grabbed bars of chocolate and rushed off to the boarding gate just in time to ...... queue to board.
Funnily enough after we'd taxied a while the pilot came on to tell us we'd be a little delayed because we were in a queue for take off!
The plane was great, the food excellent and the flight only marred a little by my inflight entertainment failing and it taking ten minutes for anyone to respond to my call. I shared my discontent with the cabin manager expressing concern that, whilst the failure of my screen was not an emergency it could have been one - I might have been having a heart attack. He helpfully, and I have to say, apologetically, explained that they answer calls in order. Seems I was held in f*+¥< g queue!"
PS What an eye opener Soweto was yesterday. Nothing like we expected.
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