I'd booked up my jab using the health service's mobile phone app. Ten past ten. I rolled up at nine minutes past and asked someone on reception where to go. She waved to the seats where lots of people were waiting. I waited and I waited. I had a bit of a chat with Enrique and a much longer one with Dorothy. It began to get stupid. I went over and collared someone wearing white pyjamas. "No idea," she said, "I'll ask". Thirty seconds later she came back and said "Go around the back". Presumably using a separate entrance is a vestige of trying to keep people from mixing too much. So I did. There was nothing obvious but there were people milling around looking medical. I asked again. Dorothy had now joined me and, unlike me, she had walked through the building, unchecked. I felt like a fathead for following a procedure that nobody knew or cared about. Eventually we both got our vaccinations.
Now I'm a big defender of things Spanish. When Britons say, disdainfully, "Well, it's Spain, what do you expect?", with the clear implication that the UK is vastly superior, I often find myself pointing out that all bureaucratic procedures have their strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise it wouldn't have taken the UK tax people 18 months to give back the money they had wrongly charged me and it wouldn't have taken eight months for my UK bank to acknowledge that the language spoken in Spain is Spanish, making official documentation in English relatively hard to come by. On the other hand there are times in Spain when hair tearing and temper tantrums seem absolutely appropriate. I don't generally go into banks or post offices much but when I do, when there is no other option, I know that the counter service will be frustrating beyond belief. I have tried to see the funny side of the clerks going for breakfast as I get to the front of the queue or the look of complete horror as bank staff stare at the information on the computer screen as though it was something completely new to them, and written in Malay, but I can't.
Obviously some things take time. I cannot suggest a way that a butcher's shop or a deli counter could speed up the process and still offer the same service. On the other hand sometimes it's so blatantly obvious where the failing is that the solution is just as obvious. Information signs, information signs with correct and up to date information, would be a good start in nearly every case. Mind you I suppose lots of us might, like the HSBC bank, want all that information in English.
