Business Places + Long Wait in Lines….Frustrating

In Jamaica, we are taught that if you don’t have all day to waste then places like banks, tax offices, hospitals/clinics, police stations and RGD offices should be avoided or we should make it our point of duty to arrive before opening hours so as the door opens, we are first to be served. However, it seems that most if not all business places have caught the fever of having customers wait in line for an extended period before being served. Whether or not, the organization is short-staffed this has become a common practice which has and continues to annoy the average Jamaican.

Thinking that since postal agencies are no longer utilized as much as they were years ago, I decided to use a few minutes out of my lunchtime to send a priority mail to a government agency in Kingston. However, upon entering the post office I was in for a grand surprise as long lines greeted me. After waiting patiently for more than 10 minutes, I finally reached the front of the counter. I proceeded to ask how much it would cost to send a priority mail and was told $100. As I began to open my purse, I was told that I’d have to go by another window as priority mails weren’t sent from the window I was at. Frustrated I asked “And why isn’t there sign to indicate the services being done at each window”? Then I walked over to the window I was sent to, luckily there wasn’t a queue there. Subsequent to giving the agent my drivers license, she stamped the envelope, sealed it with the priorty mail stamp and wrote the receipt. Without looking at the receipt, I handed her the $100 to which she responded “$200 miss”. I was certainly not pleased as I was told $100 before. With that in mind, I asked her to cancel and have the letter sent the normal way. If I had known that this would be another long wait, I would have simply paid the $200. The teller then told me to wait as she had to have her supervisor cancel and sign on the receipt (which to me made no sense as she could have done it herself). After 10 minutes, she finally returned without even apologizing.

Not only did the post office waste almost 30 minutes of my lunchtime but the workers didn’t even know the cost of their services. And on another note, why is it that we must seek our supervisor’s approval before we do certain things? It is time we get rid of this bad practice of having persons wait for extended periods to transact business. When I’m in other parts of the world and visit business places, I’m in and out within a jiffy. While in the United States, I’m not faced with the challenge of having to wake up early to reach business places before they open in order to get through quickly. Why must it be so frustrating in Jamaica? Also, express lines make absolutely no sense as the wait time is just the same.