Financial chaos
Grandad November 25th, 2007
I went down to the village yesterday.
I bought my week’s supply of tobacco from a very nice young lady in the tobacconist.
Of course she was foreign, and her English was good, except that her pronunciation of numbers wasn’t that hot. But that didn’t matter as long as I wasn’t overcharged.
I gave her my ubiquitous piece of plastic, which she passed to another girl who was nearer the card reader.
The other girl was also foreign.
She asked the first girl how much to charge. She didn’t understand the reply. Things started to get worrying when they started communicating in sign language, frantically waving fingers at each other. There again, they may just have been telling each other to f*ck off?
Anyway, in the end the first girl had to print off a receipt to hand to the second girl, just so she could know how much to charge.
I paid the correct amount and left.
It’s no wonder the world’s financial markets are in such a mess……
- Around the village
- Comments(19)
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Was it a Tarot card?
Yup. “Death”. *heh*
And they call those places ‘Convenience Stores’?
That’s not what I call it
When you say these young ladies are foreign and unable to understand each other do you mean one was from Belfast and and the other Edinboro?
They could have been from anywhere. Cavan & Cork? Croatia & China?
Somehow I think you might have known if one of them was from China!
She was a bit tall, all right. Estonia?
Ha ha! Brilliant
Swedish per chance?
Do you thing I’m going to leave my nice warm house, and go down and ask her?
She has probably been deported by now anyway.
Wuld nae be Edinboro, Glasgae maybe.
It was the piece of plastic that caused the trouble. It’s not everywhere that will accept used carrier bags in payment - even if they are 22 cent each.
With the price of tobacco, I’d have needed quite a few carrier bags!!
It was a Laser.
Next time, it’ll be a Tazer.
There is no going back. We are the last of the Irish,English,Welsh. This saddens me when I think on it. What are our governments thinking ?
I suppose if they weren’t here to do the work then no one would do it. Most Irish youth are too pigging lazy. They’d rather be on Benefits.
If everyone learned the art of Chinese finger counting it would solve that problem. Whilst wandering around markets in China I found it invaluable when I didn’t have a word of Chinese and the market stallholder didn’t speak English. We were still able to haggle in fluent finger counting.
They were probably a bit flummoxed by your card being from Northern Rock. And totally terrified when you said it’s okay, it’s fully guaranteed by Alistair Darling.
Grandad, what brand tobacco do you use? I’m strongly thinking about getting a pipe for Christmas - no joking - and would like someone to recommend a nice fragrant tobacco for when the time comes. My teacher used to smoke a pipe and there was a lovely smell of it altogether. Unlike the man himself, who reeked of boiled cabbage.
Jack - My finger counting consists of either one [central] digit or two digits. It always gets me by.
Nick - Northern Rock card / Northern Bank notes? What’s the difference?
Terence - I couldn’t possibly answer in a comment. I feel a post coming on……. Watch this space.
It is funny the way people from some countries start the finger counting on the ‘wrong’ side of the hand…