Time Wasters ! Space Wasters !

At the beginning of this week I went to one of the local Banks in Chingola.

This is the end of the month and is the time when most workers get their salaries via the Banks.

I had to deposit some money into an Account of a friend, who was to use the money to do some business transaction on my behalf.

When I entered the Bank hall, I found a very long and meandearing queue of about forty people.

There are five teller counters in the Bank hall.

I observed that four of the five counters were manned. I also noticed that one of the counters was marked "Deposits Only".

Since I was depositing cash, this brought a sigh of relief to me that I won't be very long in the Bank.

After being in the building for ten minutes, I realised that I had moved up the queue by only three spaces occupied by people in front of me !

On checking what was going on, I noticed that, in fact, only three tellers were serving customers.

The teller behind the counter marked "Deposits Only" was only handling bundles of cash, which looked like they were coming from the Bank's security Safe.

He was distributing the cash to the other three tellers. These tellers were paying out cash to customers who were getting their monthly salaries as well collecting cash being deposited.

The "Deposits Only" sign was therefore misleading !

What was annoying is that the meandearing queue was for those who were depositing and those withdrawing cash.

This was a great inconvenience to those who were depositing money, who were in the minority.

What was even more annoying was that, out of the three tellers who were working, only one of them was really doing anything. This young man was serving customers at a faster rate than the other two. I noticed that he was working approximately three times faster than his colleagues.

The other two gentlemen were really annoying because they spent more time chatting with customers or were in conversation on mobile telephones.

There is a notice stuck on the wall, which clearly prohibited the use of mobile telephones within the Bank premises. I wondered whether this notice was only meant for customers?

It took me exactly eighty minutes before I could be attended to by one of the chatting Bank tellers. This time is almost equal to that spend to watch a ninety minute football match!

This brought a revelation to me of how some people who are not productive contribute to the under development of our country.

The Bank has built a very big hall for banking purposes, at great cost, but there we were, subjected to such shoddy service.

What a lot of us do not realise is, that such people are not only time wasters but space wasters as well !

The space that they occupy is not used efficiently. This is depriving chance to other people who could utilize the space more efficiently.

Such people are more suitable to be in public Parks. The space in these Parks is meant for relaxing.

The public is entitled to efficient service from the Banks.

With the emerging of several new Banks in Zambia which are run more efficiently the future of such Banks is bleak.

How many time and space wasters do you come across on a daily basis ?