Incompetent Brits

Last week when my sister was here, on two consecutive days, we went to a trendy young women's store called Warehouse found on most UK high streets. It's somewhere in between Contempo and BeBe but way more on the former lean with prices closer to the latter. On day one, one of the employees was organizing some clothes and a massive glass shelf shattered on her right before all our eyes. Luckily no one was hurt. This is not the incompetency I am speaking of however. This same employee, quite a pretty Asian - or as they call "Oriental" here (yes, like a rug or the type of food) - rung up our purchases. This was after the other employee stood behind the till for like 5 minutes without looking up, said we had to wait, and straight walked away! So the oriental brit chick rings us up after my sister's request of two separate transactions since each would be paid with different payments. The first transaction had my bag, priced at £39. When she disclosed our total price, I thought there was some sort of discount I didn't know about because it was really cheap. To keep the long story short, when we got outside Alyssa checked the receipt. The girl from the orient forgot or mistakenly rung it up. My bag was free.

Watched Changeling a few days ago and was in one of the two lines available. There was one person in front of me and as the last one in the other line walked away, I waited where I was for the ticket handler to give me a nod. But like many other instances where I'm learning about a 5 minutes of nothingness, another patron walked straight to his window where he then assisted in the person's ticket purchase. He blatantly looked at me but didn't offer to help which was, by golly, his job. So, I continued to wait in my original line where I was eventually helped.

On the contrary, there have been times I've encountered complete competency. It's mostly occurred when I haven't had to interact with anyone (then again we were at Sainsbury's tonight at a defective self-service machine and a shop assistant had to come over for some fixing, nay, it wasn't us). I've tried running a bit again at Hyde Park. It's been really nice with all the moisture in the cold air. My joints pop and crack for every vertical movement I make now, but the runs have made all the poor experiences in London go away, perhaps even well worth it. There's something special about a park in the middle of a bustling metropolis. It's big with lakes and endless walking, running, and cycling paths. It's spotted with greenery from head to toe and, touched on before, is currently the site for Winter Wonderland. The park offers opportunity for quiet time with a brush of nature, squirrels, swans, birds, and ducks. Lately it's been some of the best alone times I've had in London. And it's the one place where no one could possibly exhibit multiple examples of ineptitude or laziness I've experienced.

When we walked into Sainsbury's earlier there was a security guard catechizing this little girl for a Christmas stuffed animal he thought was stolen. The little girl was with her younger sister and mom, who was explaining to the guard that this was hers from the forefront. Now, Christmas items at Sainsbury's are currently marked half-off. I haven't seen anything above £10 since the holiday price cut. You would think the security guard had better things to do with his time than bother this family. But there's a briton for ya and yet another example of lacking intuition.

At least I got a free bag out of it...

(note to localites-i'm completely taking the piss ok!)