Unbelievable

By today, enough is enough. When the same person annoys me for consecutive days with a consistent lack of common sense, I lost it, and made very snide remarks to this particular security/estate supervisor.

You won't get this story totally unless you're my colleague. Anyways, anyhoooo.

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Heavy rain meant we had to take umbrellas to shelter the guests out to the big bus by the road. My people were busy taking care of the guests. There was no reason why unlike other mao-mao managers who would melt in the rain, I couldn't go collect the umbrellas from the store. So I did.

Same supervisor was in charge of umbrellas. There were 2 large trolleys (1 empty and 1 filled) and 1 small empty trolley. I wanted to take both large trolleys. He stopped me, and asked how many I needed. "25, and an empty trolley", I said. He wouldn't let me take the full trolley and said he'd have a problem in the evening if all the umbrellas were wet.

Excuse me? What's the logic? The umbrellas shivering in these trolleys were ALREADY wet. He already had a problem on his hands. I don't care about his problem. I care about my guests. He's staying dry behind the counter. I'm going to be standing out there drenched.

Never mind. The next thing he did, completely boggled my brains. He started counting and transferred umbrellas from the filled large trolley into the empty large trolley. Of course by the time he filled that trolley, only 3 umbrellas were left in the original. He merrily passed me that filled trolley and looked perplexed when I told him that the empty one was also needed. It was ALIEN-WEIRD. I didn't understand one bit of his actions. It took all I possessed not to scream at him right there and then.

I asked him, "[insert name of supervisor], seriously, you did all that and it's back to square one? Why didn't you just give me the 2 trolleys in the first place? They now look exactly the same, and you wasted 6 minutes of my time." He stared at me blankly. "I can only give you the numbers you want. 25 umbrellas. Otherwise I'll have a problem this evening."

I backed away. O.MY.GOD. It dawned on me, he didn't understand, not.the.least. And he's the first point of contact with our clients and customers. How lovely. No wonder some people think we're second-class professionals and first-class idiots. Does he have a modicum of brain cells in working order? And perhaps some common sense? I don't know whether to laugh in his face or be sympathetic for his sorry ass.