After days and days of spotty internet, I finally decided to waddle my giant behind down to the telecom store and buy a new SIM card. I didn’t know if it was actually going to solve my problem, but waiting for a solution to fall into my lap wasn’t helping either. I told my cousin, I can’t afford to solve this spotty internet problem with time anymore, I’m going to try with money!
So I was expecting the telecom company to want my money and to offer me a product. My assumptions were sorely mistaken. Instead, you go down to the telecom store and you take a number and you wait for who knows how long before they even talk to you. So basically, I had walked into a Chinese bank.
I took my number, and then waited for a seat on the bench. It was a half-butt seat at first, but it turned into a whole-butt seat soon enough. But then I looked at my number and realized it was a number that took me straight to the cashier. Don’t I have to talk to a sales rep first? Also, I was 20 numbers away, and no sign of movement. So I began to despair.
I thought about going straight to the cashier and imagined that she would tell me I had the wrong kind of number, that I needed sales first, so I went to one of the number girls and said, yo, is this right? Yes, sir, yes po.
Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw an elderly English dude make a move. He starts working his “what, I’m a foreigner!” routine on Francis, the number master, captiain of the number girls. So Sir Nigel is starts listing off what he needs to Francis, and Francis is nodding and saying, yes, we can do all of those things, we just have to wait our turn.
Then Sir Nigel drops the bomb, asking, “Can’t we just do this now, here? Just help me!”
I got up and stood right next to Sir Nigel. At the opportune moment, I said to Francis, in a big American accent, “I would like the same as this gentleman, please.”
Francis… MADE IT HAPPEN. He took our money and sent a number girl to the back and five minutes later she came back with our new SIM cards and some change.
So to be clear, we got special treatment, we hurdled clear over the heads of the dozen or so people that had been waiting in line with computer generated numbers. And we got special treatment, because Sir Nigel asked for it.
My cousin told me later that it was foreiner priviledge, that it probably wasn’t pity for playing dumb. That’s just how it played out.
I like it here, I’m glad to be here. Today I latched on to someone’s priviledge and made it my own. I wonder if Francis started making it happen for others after us.
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