Ever hung around enough with your grandparents and heard the stories about the good old days…when community scored over individuals, people did everything slower, reveled in each moment…and definitely were happier back then than in this high speed, rushed up existence that we lead today?
Well…. I had the …ummm…misfortune (tried really hard to say ‘privelege’ I swear!)…of experiencing what the world must be like 40 years ago…and I can tell you…I almost killed someone.
What brought this on you ask? It was my forced trip to 2 post offices with my grandmother’s Post Office Savings Account Passbooks.
I like things to happen fast…I want my food fast…I want people to come to the point fast…I prefer T-20s to test cricket and Football to cricket for the same reasons…Hearing someone beat around the bush and standing in lines…these two things bring the Devil out in me (In IIFT I would agree to do the entire project sometimes…if only my partner would take the print outs in the end from the perennially overcrowded printer!)…Anyways where was I…Oh yes…The Post Office…
Trip 1: Area Post-Office for an Updation of the passbook:
The room was puny…Even one person alone in there would feel claustrophobic all by himself…but then…we are Indians…and we “adjust”….So there were 4 people sitting there…under 1 single fan…staring vacantly into space and occasionally talking to discuss some “office gossip” (one of them had been hauled up by their Boss for something I couldn’t catch and all of them were pretty sure he was a dead man)…That wasn’t all. A whole lot of the remaining space was crammed with dirt and web covered tottering piles of “files”…There was still some more space left…so they put in two computers that the men never touched….and to top it all…squeezed under one of the biggest tables there was a Birla Generator that looked big enough to light up that entire basti…
Anyways…got my passbook updated (all wrong as I was soon going to find out…)…got stared at by the other 3 men (alright I look scary, so sue me!)…and got out of the hell hole…just to get into a bigger one…
Trip 2: “Head” Post Office
This was much bigger…a lot more fans…a lot more space…and hence…a lot more shelves, drawers, files, people...lines…I gingerly toed the line of my once a year explosive bout of anger….
Stood in the line for 45 minutes…having gotten hardly any closer to my turn…when ofcourse “Lunch” was declared at 1:30…and the man in the make-shift cubicle…rambled out saying he’ll be back at 2…which he wasn’t.
So I decided to take the Pass Books from Trip 1 to one of the other offices in this building to get the readings tallied…Ever seen “Office-Office”…and “Usha ji”??? Well before me sat 7 Usha jis…having just opened their various tiffin boxes. Ignoring them I went inside and asked some dude to do the needful…He smirked and said, “Yeh toh Madam hi karengi, bahar jaake boliye”. So went out once again and begged the ladies to finish my work…they looked at me as if I’d lost it and told me to come back after they’d finish (after which the solemnest and slowest looking lady took the smallest morsel of food…and began to chew it 36 times…aaaargggghhh)
It was 1:45…so I went back and rejoined my line…which had a new competitor…a middle-aged lady who had duped the people in front of me and dumped all her work on the extra slow guy’s table…People shouted, shoved…to no avail…the woman was adamant….She tried to make some sort of conversation with me, and despite bare minimum response from my side, I got to know that her daughter had just passed out of IMI, got a job, and that she knew a junior of ours at IIFT! Truly irritating!
By now I was mauling the cheque I had brought along to encash, had learnt up all my account numbers in sheer frustration, and almost broken the glass pane that separated me from the “official” area.
I can’t go on anymore…coz just thinking about it makes me mad…but after 2 and a half HOURS of standing in lines, hearing stories about postal workers committing suicides (Why THEM??? We should be the ones hanging ourselves from their rather long-stemmed ceiling fans), and of course hearing one of the Usha jis discuss the virtues of slow and steady work…I finally got the work done.
It was the biggest victory I’d ever had over myself…and learnt a couple of things….Patience is NOT a virtue…it totally sucks…and ATMs are there for a reason…if only my grandparents understood that and overcame their suspicions about machines…sigh…
Well…. I had the …ummm…misfortune (tried really hard to say ‘privelege’ I swear!)…of experiencing what the world must be like 40 years ago…and I can tell you…I almost killed someone.
What brought this on you ask? It was my forced trip to 2 post offices with my grandmother’s Post Office Savings Account Passbooks.
I like things to happen fast…I want my food fast…I want people to come to the point fast…I prefer T-20s to test cricket and Football to cricket for the same reasons…Hearing someone beat around the bush and standing in lines…these two things bring the Devil out in me (In IIFT I would agree to do the entire project sometimes…if only my partner would take the print outs in the end from the perennially overcrowded printer!)…Anyways where was I…Oh yes…The Post Office…
Trip 1: Area Post-Office for an Updation of the passbook:
The room was puny…Even one person alone in there would feel claustrophobic all by himself…but then…we are Indians…and we “adjust”….So there were 4 people sitting there…under 1 single fan…staring vacantly into space and occasionally talking to discuss some “office gossip” (one of them had been hauled up by their Boss for something I couldn’t catch and all of them were pretty sure he was a dead man)…That wasn’t all. A whole lot of the remaining space was crammed with dirt and web covered tottering piles of “files”…There was still some more space left…so they put in two computers that the men never touched….and to top it all…squeezed under one of the biggest tables there was a Birla Generator that looked big enough to light up that entire basti…
Anyways…got my passbook updated (all wrong as I was soon going to find out…)…got stared at by the other 3 men (alright I look scary, so sue me!)…and got out of the hell hole…just to get into a bigger one…
Trip 2: “Head” Post Office
This was much bigger…a lot more fans…a lot more space…and hence…a lot more shelves, drawers, files, people...lines…I gingerly toed the line of my once a year explosive bout of anger….
Stood in the line for 45 minutes…having gotten hardly any closer to my turn…when ofcourse “Lunch” was declared at 1:30…and the man in the make-shift cubicle…rambled out saying he’ll be back at 2…which he wasn’t.
So I decided to take the Pass Books from Trip 1 to one of the other offices in this building to get the readings tallied…Ever seen “Office-Office”…and “Usha ji”??? Well before me sat 7 Usha jis…having just opened their various tiffin boxes. Ignoring them I went inside and asked some dude to do the needful…He smirked and said, “Yeh toh Madam hi karengi, bahar jaake boliye”. So went out once again and begged the ladies to finish my work…they looked at me as if I’d lost it and told me to come back after they’d finish (after which the solemnest and slowest looking lady took the smallest morsel of food…and began to chew it 36 times…aaaargggghhh)
It was 1:45…so I went back and rejoined my line…which had a new competitor…a middle-aged lady who had duped the people in front of me and dumped all her work on the extra slow guy’s table…People shouted, shoved…to no avail…the woman was adamant….She tried to make some sort of conversation with me, and despite bare minimum response from my side, I got to know that her daughter had just passed out of IMI, got a job, and that she knew a junior of ours at IIFT! Truly irritating!
By now I was mauling the cheque I had brought along to encash, had learnt up all my account numbers in sheer frustration, and almost broken the glass pane that separated me from the “official” area.
I can’t go on anymore…coz just thinking about it makes me mad…but after 2 and a half HOURS of standing in lines, hearing stories about postal workers committing suicides (Why THEM??? We should be the ones hanging ourselves from their rather long-stemmed ceiling fans), and of course hearing one of the Usha jis discuss the virtues of slow and steady work…I finally got the work done.
It was the biggest victory I’d ever had over myself…and learnt a couple of things….Patience is NOT a virtue…it totally sucks…and ATMs are there for a reason…if only my grandparents understood that and overcame their suspicions about machines…sigh…
3 comments:
Disagree at places. The setup back then had major flaws alright, but then, ever had those experiences where you go to an office (even govt. ones) and get work done with minimal hassles through the normal queued-up ways and even gotten yourself a cup of coffee while at it? Boils down to people who run the show. In a general sense, the whole system is a rot. Ushaji's and Mishraji's abound, but there are those few good fellas too - a pity they exist in small nos.
What better is it now? Polished made-up customer service dolls feeding you lines memorized out of a handbook, automated messages greeting you on customer service helplines that take 20 minutes to let you define the prob. while you press 1s and 2s? Even ATMs have their troubles now and then.
Things that should move fast should do. Time's a luxury not all of us have. But is taking people out of the loop the only solution? I'd like to think otherwise.
Agree alright...I'm not thrilled with the women/robots I meet at the private banks either who will insist you are dead if the computer says so (I do tend to exaggerate, but you get the picture :D)...I have met some really awesome folks at the very same post office earlier..but miraculously they get "transfered" at an astonishing pace..and we are stuck with the "Babu" types...
Unfortunate, but true. I guess we'd be cribbing about it one way or another all the same. Babudom and its variants are here to stay :(.
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