Larson, the cartoonist, was a genius and an American – a very rare combination indeed. He was able to encapsulate frustration into a one liner and a sketch. My particular favourite was a picture of a shop interior in which all of the shelves had been placed just below the ceiling. The caption read: ‘Inconvenience Store.’
You might think that this is simply the whimsy of a fertile imagination but his cartoons are borne out of real life. I come across this sort of stuff all the time. For example, on Saturday I encountered an ‘Inconvenient Convenience’ at Farnborough Football Club.
The urinals under the main stand are high enough up the wall to trouble Meadowlark Lemon. For anyone under 7 feet the only feasible way to avoid a puddle and an embarrassing tie die stain around the crutch is to stand a yard away and ‘arc.’ This option requires a steady hand, stomach muscles and a well-timed sprint towards the urinal prior to the shake. Inevitably this set of skills are only in the domain of the under 40s. Anyone beyond that age is acutely aware that nothing dribbles uphill.
Last Friday, whilst travelling to Bristol, I also encountered the most ‘Inconvenient Parking Meter.’ I was planning to meet a colleague at Chievely Services leave my car there and drive down with him. The new thing in parking is buying your ticket by telephone. The sign informed me it was for my convenience, as I would no longer need to rout around for change – a dubious benefit as the cost for parking was a crispy tenner.
To take advantage of this convenience I had to register as a customer. The sign informed me of the benefits – if I ever parked in one of the management’s parking spaces again I wouldn’t have to do much. Obviously, to enjoy such a worthy benefit I’d need to register my car too – that way if I ever parked the same car in one of their parking spaces ever again I’d save loads of time. Clearly, taking my debit card details was a pre-requisite, as it would also save me considerable time should I ever park the same car in the one of their parking spaces ever again.
As the other option to giving them my debit card details, car registration number and registering was parking on the hard shoulder of the M4 I opted for the convenience.
I then set about the registration process – a system based on hitting the right key, in the right order and listening to a voice recorded over the top of a 7 year old practising the violin regurgitating my selection back to me. Not too difficult for numbers but quite a task when you combine numbers and letters. Take a look at your telephone keypad. Under most of the numbers are 3 or 4 letter clusters. So to simply input the letter V of my registration number for example, I had to input the number 8 – the violin voice then asked me to confirm I had selected the number 8. 1 for yes, 2 for no, 3 for repeat the options. I selected 1. It then suggested I might like to pick 1 for T 2 for U 3 for V or 4 to repeat the options. I selected 3 for V. The violin asked me to confirm my selection - 1 for yes, 2 for no, 3 for repeat the options. I selected 1.
Bored yet?
Imagine the fun I had with the debit card details. Then disaster. I pressed the wrong key but confirmed it was the right key. I put this down to repetitive the strain injury that to this day has left me with an index finger set to permanent point mode. I had to ring off and start the whole process over again.
By now I was drawing a crowd. People get so inquisitive when they see someone circling a car like a punch-drunk boxer and repeatedly calling the phone cupped in their hand a bastard.
30 minutes and two text message confirmations later, feeling light-headed and now 30 minutes late for my meeting I set off.
The moral of this story is: never trust anything or anyone that promises you convenience because it invariably mean theirs, not your...
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