Every so often I like to visit the ‘service’ centre of Lambeth Council, mainly because if I’m feeling down it is good for a laugh. So proved to be the case on my annual outing to renew my residential parking permit, surely the highlight of the season for appreciators of vintage left-wing madness.
When I arrived at the fabulously well appointed building in otherwise totally neglected Streatham, it was virtually empty. Only three people were sitting on the designer seats in the waiting area, and, what was more, there were eight members of staff sitting behind a long row of gleaming desks. Eight servers to three customers is the sort of ratio even Lambeth could not fail to turn to its advantage, I thought, as I settled myself in for a medium wait.
I took a ticket from the expensive-looking machine which told me I was number 56 and sure enough the huge flatscreen on the wall declared that number 53 was currently being served while the estimated waiting time was five minutes.
What happened next was extraordinary. As the minutes ticked by, the number of customers being served exponentially decreased until I slipped from being third in the queue to fifth, then seventh, then tenth, then 15th, then my number dropped off the screen altogether.
In 15 minutes, the estimated waiting time went from five minutes to one hour 55 minutes. There was no escaping the incredible truth: where there had been no queue, Lambeth Council had managed to conjure one out of thin air. I don’t think Derren Brown could have done any better. Never have so many members of staff made so little service go such a short way around so few people. It was a wonder to behold.
I strained every brain cell to try to work out how they were pulling it off. I decided to focus my eyes on the blank-faced operators sitting behind the desks to see if their actions provided any clue to the illusion.
After a while, I worked out that a pattern did seem to be at work. After dealing with a customer for a few minutes, each operator would wander away from their desk and stand doing nothing in a corner. Often a few of them would stand together in the corner talking, or offering each other Polos or comparing their nails. Then they would walk back to their customer and resume serving them.
After each customer had been dealt with, they would take an even longer break of about ten or 15 minutes. This they would spend wandering around the service centre very slowly and aimlessly, at times stopping to stare out of a window or glance at their watch.
Suddenly it hit me: the poor lost souls must be fulfilling some sort of workplace repetitive strain injury prevention target. They had obviously been ordered not to press the buttons of their keyboards, or sit in their chairs, for longer than a few minutes at a time and to take generous screen breaks to ensure their health and wellbeing. Clearly they had also been told that dealing with the general public was emotionally exhausting and that they should not attempt to hold a conversation of longer than 30 seconds without taking time out for ‘mental stress relief’. Whether this helped them or not I have no idea.
But the net result was that I ended up spending an hour and a half trying to read the tattoos on the arms of a girl sitting on the ergonomic waiting bench next to me. One of them bore the legend ‘Sean Tequan’, which I concluded was either a rap star or the father of her child, or possibly both because the toddler was wearing a dummy held round his neck by a massively thick, solid gold chain. I invented the term ‘dummy bling’. Such things are entertaining if you’re stuck in a reversing queue.
When I finally got served, it was by a woman who typed in the registration of my car so randomly, and with such incredible lack of attention to where she was putting her fingers, that she got every single digit wrong. She didn’t read it back to check and so as she went to issue me with a £135 permit which had nothing to do with me, I had to scream at her to stop.
‘But you’ve got all the letters and numbers wrong,’ I said. ‘Oh, yeah!’ she laughed, and started randomly bashing the keys again with all her fingers at once.
On reflection, I don’t think this was because she was stupid, but rather because of workplace stress injury guidance stating: ‘Do not try to press any key with one finger. This will increase your chances of RSI by 0.001 per cent.’
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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