Well I am amazed, I have just visited an institution that has managed the almost impossible task of making the complete fucking numpties at Tesco look good.
It's called The Post Office.
Now in times past, the Queen used to own the PO and it worked, you went in and a two hundred years old assistant assisted you to post a letter or parcel.
Now it is so very different.
The Post Office just off of Trafalgar Square has plumbed new depths of being completely useless.
First off they do not now have a queue. They have seating areas where, having taken a ticket from the machine, you wait.
There is of course no indication that you need to take a ticket and so initially you stand in what is the closest approximation to a queue in the hope that someone might help you.
Hearing the numbers being called out gave me the tip off and so I looked for a ticket machine and was given number 009.
I heard 5 being called and then rather astonishingly number 470. Now slightly worried that there were hundreds of people in front of me, I asked a uniformed PO person what the form was.
It was at this stage that I discovered that my own stupidity at not having acquired fluency in Urdu was going to make the going rather tough.
I sort of managed to ascertain that I "should not vurry". So, without a single vurry in my head I waited and eventually number 9 was called out.
I was directed to a slightly odd box, which I entered to find a bloke seated at the other end.
I presented my letter along with the request in English to have it sent registered.
He chatted away in Urdu for about a minute. I thought it a bit rude that having taken on board my request he was chatting to his mate, but no, it turned out he was talking to me.
And so there ensued a rather bizarre discussion where I had to try and decide what it was he meant using not much more than complete and utter guesswork.
We eventually settled on my chosen option and he looked jolly pleased. He labelled my letter accordingly, took the rather eye watering amount of £6.70 from me ( for a registered letter from London to Heathrow for fucks sake!!!) handed me my change and then he hit with with this:
Man speaking Urdu: would you like a mortgage or re-mortgage?
Me: sorry?
Man speaking Urdu: would you like a mortgage or re-mortgage?
Me: I'm ever so sorry, what are you saying?
Man speaking Urdu: would you like a mortgage or re-mortgage?
Me: (thinking that the word mortgage maybe means "stamps" in Urdu) a mortgage?
Man speaking Urdu: (looking delighted that we'd finally made a connection, yes, a mortgage or a re-mortgage!
At this stage I was reeling and trying to reconcile my need to post a letter with his desire to sell me a mortgage.
I declined and just as he was about to start to sell me something else, probably a basket of dead monkeys for all I know, I had to hold my hand up and thank him for his time and for processing my letter but that I didn't want anything else.
FYI the box/cubicle he made me stand in had loads of cameras so I suspect I may appear in the not too distant future on some Dom Jolly style spoof TV programme.
If it was not a joke then the Post Office management must be totally barking mad as who in their right mind pops out to post a letter and comes home with a bloody mortgage?
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