Every week the receptionist sits during lunch for one of us, in rotation. Today, the receptionist was to do lunch-duty in my place. She asked me if I would sit for her for 5mins just for her to get “a bite to eat”. I agreed, but at 13:00, hbbm asked me to do some emails. That took about 5minutes, and I came back and the receptionist hadn’t even stopped working ready to go out. I asked her whether she’d gone out yet and she said she hadn’t, so I said I was ready to listen. That was at 13:10. She only LEFT at about 13:15, and came back not 5mins later, 15 minutes later. G had been waiting outside for 15mins already when I got out at 13:30.
She is really one for taking advantage. She came late yesterday. She didn’t phone anybody. First I hear of it was when the door buzzer went and I thought to myself ‘that’s strange someone buzzing the door before 8:30’. I looked at my watch – “SHIT it was 8:35! Where is this lady??!!” So I opened the switchboard, and phoned the typist to hear if she’d been notified by the receptionist that she was late. She said that the boss hadn’t mentioned anything, and that she’d spoken to her about it already. As I finished speaking to the typist, the switchboard rang, and it was this lady. She was stuck in traffic it town and would be late. She only phoned at 8:40. She phoned the SWITCHBOARD. I asked her if I could put her through to one of the bosses cos she’s supposed to inform one of them, but she hung up on me.
I was very annoyed at that stage. When she got in, I was busy typing emails for hbbm, and only afterwards was I able to have a word with her about LETTING A BOSS & 1 OTHER STAND-IN PERSON KNOW that she is late. Even if she is only POSSIBLY going to be late. As long as someone knows that, they can open the switchboard in time. She argued about that saying she couldn’t phone before 8:30 cos the switchboard was closed, so I “reminded” her that the message on the voicemail says ‘welcome, our office hours are... if you know the extension dial it now or leave a message...’ so she “could have spoken to anyone in the whole company”. “oh”. Hopefully THIS TIME it will have sunk in!!
Anyway, where was I... yes, lunch time today. G was patiently waiting outside for me and we took a stroll down to a coffee shop nearby. Sat down and someone from another table passed us menus ‘else you’ll wait ages’. After a while, a waitress came to take our order: 1 cappuccino, 1 hot chocolate. She disappeared somewhere. Another waitress came past and asked what we wanted. Repeated our order. After a while the first waitress came back and said “erm, you wanted a cappuccino and a....?”
After about 20minutes, we got our cappuccino and hot chocolate. Slurped it down in about 5 minutes (because I only had 15mins left once we’d got the drinks). Sat waiting for 5mins, then a waiter took away our cups. Waited another 2minutes before we saw “our” waitress again. She served someone, joked with him, and went back into the coffee shop, all the time with her back to us. We waited another 3 minutes until she came back to serve the same person, and once again she kept her back towards us. She was about to disappear back indoors when G proclaimed “scuse me... SCUSEME!!” and the other customer called her too. G gave her the money and we left. We weren’t going to wait for her to prepare a bill for us.
The coffee shop in question:
No comments:
Post a Comment