Saturday 4 April
Today, I decided to buy ferry tickets to Rotto as a gift for Susan, to thank her for taking an interest in me. I rang the ferry office to see when they close. 5 pm. Great. I pottered about for a bit before heading off and arrived at the ferry office at 4.45 to buy my tickets. Plenty of time. Sorry, we can’t serve you as we cash up at 4.30. Then why do you tell people that you are open until 5 pm? You may as well close your window at 4.30. They patiently explained to me that they are open until 5 pm, as I could plainly see, but they don’t serve customers after 4.30 pm.
Of course, they couldn’t care less that they missed out on a $150 sale. They were only interested in getting out of the door at 5 pm on the dot. I wonder why the tourist industry here is in trouble. We don’t need more ads encouraging people to visit us so they can walk on a dream (that’ll get them here), what we need is to be more helpful and friendly to the ones that do visit us, so they’ll tell their mates when they return home.
It looks like Susan will be getting a different thank-you gift from me. So, she isn’t going to be walking on her dreams, not even her nightmares, on Rotto. She’ll have to walk on them somewhere else.