I know that we are new at this whole first world thing. That we lived here in the past counts for nothing as we have become accustomed to SA's ways - good and bad - and traded sometimes our frustration with piss poor service levels for the beauty and warmth of the weather and the lazy lifestyle.
I am not claiming oracle status in these few days of first world status and I'm not even sure what I think yet but our experiences so far suggest that the service staff who inhabit this part of the planet are either more tuned into service, or more educated, or better trained, or better paid or just give more of a shit. I wrote briefly yesterday about the experience in the bank with Joe Bloggs the bank employee who spent lots of time giving us some valuable street advice on what to expect, there was also the uniformed BIG Bus company guy who explained to these tourists (us) about the ins and outs of seeing the sights in London, today it was the second hand car salesmen who spent literally hours going over a car with us, all the ins and out, all the pitfalls, all the benefits.
I don't know what it is; maybe its just me, maybe I've become in tune with it because of the work I did back in SA but here it seems that you can afford to let your guard down a bit, it seems (and I hesitate to write this as I touch wood and know that I might be wrong and perhaps a little pre emptive about this!) that, wait for it, not everyone is trying to rip you off. There I have said it, I have bought curse upon myself.
The whole strawberry thing progresses along slowly (if you're a tad lost right now I am talking about my recent purchase of a blackberry smart phone). My fingers I think have not slimmed down to pencil points so typing on this thing is proving menacingly tedious. At least I am in touch with all who have one and receiving mostly one way chat - it would be two way if I could type faster and more accurately - the first person to invent voice chat will be the winner....oh wait...that would be the telephone! At least I am now available on facebook at every given moment of the day and of course of the night too with my beeping and pinging all dancing its smart but I'm not phone. Now at least I can be important and clever and be on the phone all the time, even if I'm only exploring my voyeuristic tendencies by staring at other's profiles and more often than not their mountains of 'this is my kid' photographs.
I am tempted to try out twitter too...maybe I'll too have no one following me like some I know (that must be depressing and ego damaging?)
Anyway, I am digressing from the completely one sided opinion of what good service should be and who should be delivering it. I am suitably and so far impressed with what I have received and will try and remember these prophetic (?) words in the months and years to come. As a side note again; I mentioned the car salesman earlier. We were again at Car Giant - this time having a better look round. And i reckon there is probably five or six or seven thousand cars on this one site. That is a lot of cars making the one owner of this business some pretty serious cash! The sales guy talked about them selling some three to four thousand cars a month from this one site. Crazy volumes and imagine the logistics around all that.
Until tomorrow, hope you have a great day.
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