Generally
it seems that anyone who works for a utility company (especially one of the former monopoly companies), in any level of local government administration or for the civil service is a complete cunty jobsworth who follows their inane procedures to the letter in spite of any common sense to the contrary.

Actually, I'll take that back as my mum worked in the jobcentre for 15 years and always had a great time with the 'clients' as they were called, but couldn't understand why some of her colleagues would treat some unemployed people like scum. She used to say she'd like some of them to be made redundant and see what it would be like on the other side of the desk. She got so fucked off with the bureaucracy in the end she left herself.

But what amazed me was the experience I had when I worked in Austria over the winter. You have to register in the local administrative town. They had a form, in German, but also had kindly printed out a guide to how to fill it out in English. They gave out a load of pens and dragged a couple of people BACK EARLY FROM THEIR LUNCH BREAK when we rocked up so that they could process us all quickly (about 25 of us had turned up in one go from our company). This in a beautiful pristine office building which compares mightily against Hammersmith & Fulham council offices. Same experience in the Post office / A1 (mobile network) shop - you go in because your UK charger has packed up to buy a new charger, they don't sell them but instead have a box of old chargers for various different mobiles (bog standard nokia for me so no hassle) - they encourage people to bring in their old chargers if they upgrade their phones, and they charge you EUR3 which gets stuck in the mountain rescue charity fund! Same in the electricity supplier shop, you can sort out your bill in no time if there is some error.

I'm tempted to join Humpty in Scandiland...
(Calamity wetter than a fish's wet bits - bloody rain on, Fri 27 Jul 2007, 15:32, Reply)