Customer service

It should have been so simple: a short trip to the bank and then to the railway station. At the bank, to pay in a small cheque.  They have a machine for such transactions. Just one. Two chaps were trying to pay in about £500 in ten pound notes, one at a time.  After standing in the queue and doing some of that sighing that sometimes hurries people along, I went to the cashiers' desk instead. 

Two cashiers. One was dealing with a woman depositing a week's business takings in a mixture of cheques, notes, coins and some foreign currency. The cashier spotted that she had completed her paying-in book in pencil and made her trace over every word in biro. 

The other cashier was attending to someone who wanted to know her current balance, query a transaction, get a new credit card, order some holiday money and a few other things I couldn't decipher. When I was eventually served, the cashier said "thank you for waiting."

Thence to the railway station to collect some advance purchased tickets for a trip tomorrow. The ticket machine was broken. I drove to another station, not far away.  The ticket machine was broken.

To get over the disappointment, I went to Hollingworth Lake for a walk in very warm sunshine. This blip shows my favourite cafe there, who always know exactly what I want and serve it in double quick time. Thirsty, I went instead to The Wine Press, expecting them to have run out of Black Sheep Bitter.  But they hadn't and it was superb.