my love affair with complaining about slow service is over

Rather boringly re-write what my weekend looked like (look at Patricia's blog for details-http://www.livejournal.com/users/plancia/), I'll just continue on... but first I just wanted to clarify something she wrote. Yes, the talk often turns to the poor customer service that plagues Britain. But before I arrived, I understood poor customer service to be rudeness. it's not. Most people I've had to deal with have been lovely, really nice. The problem is the layers of bureaucracy and privatization and lack of employee empowerment have formed a hard, impenetrable papier mache over initiative and ingenuity. I have come to accept that everything takes time here. It's virtuous, I suppose. Teaching patience and planning ahead. And while I have accepted this, I can't help occasionally wanting to scream 'it doesn't have to be this way'. In fact, it has become more funny than annoying, more amusing anecdote than stress-inducing. however, now I live here and there is nothing worse than someone going on about how much better things are somewhere else. If I don't like it I can leave, and as such I will never mention the snail-like pace of BT, banks, or the NHS (except on the occasions when my experience has been truly amusing). That is all.