As the title suggests it has been a week of KL / Malaysian experiences. I am in the process of arranging an out of school performance venue for a sixth form devised play, all being well sometime in October. There are several good venues in and around KL and so after looking at them I choose the one I liked the most and made a provisional booking. So far so good. Clearly I wanted my colleagues' input on the decision so arranged for a Drama Dept outing on Friday to visit the venue. To make sure nothing could go wrong I spoke to the centre manager on Tuesday. She assured me that she would be at the venue on Friday, at 1215, and that the venue would be empty for us to explore. It won't take a genius to work out that precisely the opposite occurred. On arrival I asked to see her: she wasn't there. I asked to see the venue: the was a conference taking place, so it was not possible to see the place. Great. The lesson I learned? Never try to be too organised. Fortunately the delegates took a well-deserved lunch break and so we three Drama people sneaked in and explored. Phew.
Next 'experience' happened last night. Edwin is going off for a week's camp in the first week of July and so needs to get various pieces of equipment. Currently The Boy Lawrence spends most of life in the world of Harry Potter so the last place he wanted to be was a shopping centre playing hunt the trousers and trainers. Our first port of call was Factory Outlet Stores - a cheap and cheerful place for children's clothes. Two blokes were standing on the shop floor sporting badges reading 'I will smile and be helpful,' so I approached and asked one of them about trousers in Edwin's size. The badge wearer looked at me, grunted and turned back to grunting at the other bloke who appeared to be clueless as to our request. Thank goodness the bloke was smiling and being cheerful. I dread to think what he would have done if he had not been wearing his helpful badge. Despite the staff we did manage to buy His Lordship some trousers.
Next shop was Aeon to look for suitable footwear. This time the staff to customer ratio was stacked even further against us. After much searching we found the children's shoes area where we counted five staff standing around trying to look busy. Two of the staff looked busy by mock wrestling each other while the others stared vacantly into the middle distance, carefully avoiding us weird foreigners. Eventually we settled on a pair of feet coverings that would be suitable and asked one of the five for the correct size. He sauntered off in to the depths of the shop. A full minutes later and with no shoe clutching bloke in sight we considered leaving. We asked the others of his whereabouts and they were as clueless as we were. Just as we were about to leave a short Muslim lady returned clutching the correct sized shoes. They fitted well, it we were all concerned as to exactly what had happened to original server? The lady wrote the price on a piece of paper and we when to the till.
Arriving at the till we had 'The Paying Experience.' Four staff were standing at a deserted Pay Here counter. Two people per till, naturally. The division of labour went something like this: Person one to hold the item, read the paper with the price on. Person two to scan the item, despite the price being on a bit of paper, and ask for our loyalty card. Person two to take our 33 ringgit and then give the money to person one, who then put the only in till. My only surprise was that person one did not give the receipt to person two to give to us. Did we really need seven staff to sell us a pair of children's shoes?