Every month a sort of Admin day raises its head, our little "To Do" list reaches a point where the inevitable trip to Fethiye is called for. Today was such a day, everything from hair bobbles to broken sun glasses and birthday cards were on the list along with SGK payment, a list of questions for our personal banker and to grab some cash from a cash point. Everything that wasn't associated with a bank went smoothly whereas anything bank related was a nightmare !
We sat waiting our turn to see our account adviser who today is sat at a desk in the main bank area due to building works being carried out on the upper floors of the bank, hence no number system was in place which equalled complete chaos. Turkish people have many nice redeeming features but I'm afraid that forming an orderly queue isn't one of them. People came from left right and centre trying to be seen, they pulled up chairs next to her desk and one guy even phoned her mobile number while stood in the branch. Even when we finally joined them at their own game and camped out in front of her desk, a rather elderly gentleman who had already taken 40 minutes of her time and was packing up to leave, then decided he wanted to be shown how computer banking worked, at this point I was holding Chris down.
Anyway, over to the bank to pay our SGK and hey presto, a numbering system was in place, 67 was up on the board and I was 73. Not bad I thought but how wrong I was proved to be. The display board then started calling 3 digit numbers, people would sit with a personal banker and carry out transactions that were designed to be done at the till, the personal banker would then give them a magic number which was always called next and off they went to the teller in front of us all sitting and waiting patiently.
The third sort were those who didn't bother with numbers, they simply stood hovering at the counter waiting for someone to be dealt with and then quick as a flash they jump in front of the clerk and guess what, each and everyone of them were dealt with.
Finally, off to get some cash from a cashpoint, but here they're not just cash points, people feed more money into them than they take out, obviously paying bills but this type of transaction must have the most complicated menu structure in the world as people spent up to five minutes reading the screen, waited for mobile phones to text security numbers which then required entering at certain points, then they take out a purse or wallet as it seemed to come as some kind of unexpected step that being there to pay your electric or phone bill would require you to have some cash available, then it was the inevitable asking others in the queue if they had change of a 50 before they fed the machine, then started all over again!
They do a lot of things well here but organisation over banking transactions ain't one of them !
