Why is the woman in front me at the check out ALWAYS a bloody forensic accountant ????

Noooo Nobby you need to get behind the woman that is 3 quarters through her check out items and decides she has forgotten something, and just buggers of for 5 minutes to get what she wants, then fumbles trying to open the plastic bags and packs her stuff very slowly then pays in cash and has to grovel through her purse for every last centimo, still not having packed everything when the next persons stuff starts to come down the checkout, Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

CHILL BABY  CHILL

Yes,yes,yes Hazelnut-- that absolutely drives me round the bend-but, what gets me even more is the woman,always a woman, >:( who puts her stuff on the belt-to reserve her place as it were- then sends her brat off to complete her shopping,brat comes back with the wrong stuff then Mummy goes off on her search leaving me standing there !!!!!

Or......there's the conversation,usually centered around the old dears life history.The fish is walking to the car and the Bio yohgurt is now penecillin.

briand6868 wrote on Mar 8^th, 2011 at 8:05pm:

Yes,yes,yes Hazelnut-- that absolutely drives me round the bend-but, what gets me even more is the woman,always a woman, >:( who puts her stuff on the belt-to reserve her place as it were- then sends her brat off to complete her shopping,brat comes back with the wrong stuff then Mummy goes off on her search leaving me standing there !!!!!

Glad its just not me then!! I have since pushed in front of people who leave their basket at the check out and then walk off to do more shopping, they look quite perturbed on their return, but Feck em I say, they are not in the village shop anymore!!

Can you imagine the trauma if they introduced self check out aisles in Cataloonia!!

wrote on Mar 8^th, 2011 at 8:52pm:

briand6868 wrote on Mar 8th, 2011 at 8:05pm: Yes,yes,yes Hazelnut-- that absolutely drives me round the bend-but, what gets me even more is the woman,always a woman, >:( who puts her stuff on the belt-to reserve her place as it were- then sends her brat off to complete her shopping,brat comes back with the wrong stuff then Mummy goes off on her search leaving me standing there !!!!! [highlight]Glad its just not me then!! I have since pushed in front of people who leave their basket at the check out [/highlight]and then walk off to do more shopping, they look quite perturbed on their return, but Feck em I say, they are not in the village shop anymore!! Can you imagine the trauma if they introduced self check out aisles in Cataloonia!!

I once queued behind an unmanned basket for 5 days before I realised they'd taken the old biddy off in an ambulance!  We had similar experiences when first here in the Tivenys Spa shop - could take an hour to buy 300g of ham!
:D

Just buy 25g and you could be out in 5 mins. ;D

My local Lidl is the place for me,no fannying about, in-shop-pay-out great.Any dawdlling is dealt with by the checkout girls who loudly encourage people with only a couple of items to jump people who are still unloading full trollies. Leads me on to the next rant- in the queue behind a person with a full trolley who insists on waiting until its her turn to be dealt with,and checkout person is poised, :o to BEGIN to unload the trolley , ONE ITEM AT A TIME !!! Grrrrrrr.

Have you not realised that patience is a virtue that you need to develop here ?  It's part of the culture.  It takes a while but makes for a smoother passage if you can master it.

Patient People get walked over, pushed in front of and left at T junctions for hours!!
Watch the video its obviously a Latin thing about checkouts!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v9Oio2QbLE&tracker=False

And one for Nobby and Briand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrthNBcq5jc&tracker=False

It's not just checkouts...everything takes so unnessessessessessarraly (soory about the speeling) long.
Patience may be a virtue but thats why the country is 20 years behind the rest of Europe and on its knees.Clueless.

wrote on Mar 10^th, 2011 at 8:59am:

It's not just checkouts...everything takes so unnessessessessessarraly (soory about the speeling) long. Patience may be a virtue but thats why the country is 20 years behind the rest of Europe and on its knees.Clueless.

And its why I love the place
Unnecessarily or not, I had enough of everything having to be done in double quick time back in the UK.
Here just take it easy, Bigyin is right Patience is a virtue, and high blood pressure makes you die younger.
And I know how to spell 'unnecessarily' so there ;D

I agree totally with Cactus Jack.  I've lived in Spain for almost 36 years and believe me it has come a very long way in this time, but thank goodness it is still behind other European countries in many ways... I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.  Just relax and enjoy.  :)

Allthough some aspects of Cataloonya being 30 years behind the times can be amusing,dealing with officials is not.
An example of this is when dealing with officials at the Adjuntament and none of their bills or information is available translated.
It is if they want to make paying bills,taxes etc.more difficult !
The recent Census in the uk is available translated into 56 languages,allthough Cataloonyian is omitted.

Phil
Take someone with you who can speak their language, or learn it yourself.
Just because the UK governments are so pathetic that they use the taxpayers money to translate forms for people who cant be bothered to learn English, does not mean that every other nation should do the same. And yes I live here and still pay a lot of tax in the UK.
They have a system here for paying bills which works fine for the locals. You arent a local, so you have to work a way of dealing with it , not them....Rant over  :)

And have you tried dealing with HMRC lately ?

The UK do spend way too much on trying to be 'politically correct' and translate everything into every conceivable language.. then get it seriously wrong as there is nobody there who understands the language it is translated into...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7702913.stm

At least it's good for a smile now and again.. remember the wonderful translations of user instructions that used to appear every now and again on Japanese and Chinese electrical goods?  There still are some crackers around..
Anyone even the faintest idea what this t-shirt is all about that was bought in Tortosa?

---

Looks like Burns to me.  ;D

That's easy Nigel....William Wordsworth,I wandered lonely as a cloud. Translated by Google from Catalan into Mandarin Chinese and back to English to be sold to a Nigerian in Tortosa for €55.00
(Actual cost $2.00,and very carbon friendly)

Susanita and Cactus,I can sympathise but there are limits...

Door hinges,on order,8 weeks and counting with a shrug of shoulders.Screwfix direct,5 days.Lost customer.
3000 bulbs,"somewhere in a post office in Spain".Dutch firm,5 days.
Lawnmower repair,2 day job,4 weeks later job not done properly and very expensive.Lost customer.
Computor part,usual life story scenario,15 mins later part returned to shelf and walked out.Lost customer.
Garden machinery,expensive and unsure about delivery date.
Ebay,Germany,5 days later and 1/3 of the price.
Does anybody actually give a $hit.
It's got to the stage where the internet and private delivery firms are the way forward and cut out the laid back,couldn't care less atitude.
Ironically,Spains housing minitry is sending a delegation to try and sell their unsold and repossesed housing stock to the very people who can actually be bothered to get off their arses.
Rant over,I'm off for a lie down now in a darkened room.

We recently had another example of terrible customer service when asked to call in to the Basa office.
This time it did not revolvle around trying to understand one another,as the officer could speak some English.
But,when we where starting to get near to resolving the problem,the official suddenly got up and walked away from the desk and turned his back on us.
We waited for him to return,but he put his arms up in the arm and jestured for us to go away !
Perhaps there is a time limit they can spend with each customer,or perhaps he could not be bothered ?

It wasn't the one in Amposta was it as I've been badly treated there. ?  There's a problem that the BASE office sends out bills for the properties (land and house or whaterver) that they are told by the Cadastral belong to you.  The problem comes in when as part of the computerisation of their records, many errors have occurred.  I for example own a pig farm about 3Km up the road according to them.  Of course if you're not fluent in Catalan or Castellano, it can be very difficult to sort out.  Although this might be getting off topic, a lot of patience (and tenacity) is required.